Board of Education Climate Change Action Plan (CCAP) Ad Hoc Committee, March 5, 2025

001the time is now 4:38 p.m. good afternoon and welcome to the March 5th 2025 climate change action plan ad hoc committee meeting I am Pamela Boozer struther committee chair and District 3 board member it brings me great pleasure to welcome everyone to today's meeting and I look forward to our work tonight for those unable to observe now the meeting is being recorded and can be accessed on the PGCPS YouTube channel for later viewing the agenda and documents can be found on the PGCPS board docs linked from the Board of Education homepage before we begin I just wanted to to say a few words um that you know in this context of a presidential Administration that is turning its back on climate action uh our work in Maryland then PGCPS continues the Maryland Energy Administration grant

002program for school system projects is funded electric bus depot conversions continue in many school systems so that the granted purchased and leased buses get on the road as quickly as possible the PGCPS board continues to highlight during our our general meetings the academic curriculum and extracurricular experiences directly related to students taking climate action in their schools and in their communities and our very own climate change action plan that brings us together today and throughout the year is inspiring school systems and communities and PGCPS leaders are frequently receiving requests to speak at conferences and advocacy events and just this weekend I joined Karen Yoho a fredr County Board of Education member on a panel with representatives from from the Maryland Energy Administration and city of Baltimore public schools to help predi County Public Schools continue to

003organize for action and so I just wanted to say that our work matters uh all of you here on this ad hoc committee matter our PGCPS staff implementing the work that our commitment is there even in a a broader context that is that I know many of us are finding um you know very difficult and of course uh very concerned for our children and our children's future uh today we will learn about school related climate bills in Annapolis we will hear from our student members about their recent activities and plans for the student environmental Alliance annual Summit and we will Deep dive into priority area number two and three reducing PGCPS carbon footprint from buildings and committing to renewable energy sources for net zero emissions future so thank you all for committing to this work

004so um uh Miss Lopez um uh please please call the role Miss strer present H Don Kate colon present Jessie Gomez Joseph jakura present Christina Well presentent Timothy mayor present D Dorothy Morrison David Noto Beth noic present Ramon lcia C Benjamin Rous antoan Thompson James D Garcia present Maya good Olivia Thomas present Sophia V and Mikel Witherspoon present nine um members pres and this is Donald Bell I am presid I'm driving I was able to uh unmute when you call my name but I'm here thank you I will call your name Don Bill present and this is James Robertson I did not hear my name called yeah I apologize uh James Robertson present so there 10 members person and um if is there anybody that I'm missing yes good evening I'm Jamie Austin J mou

005e you can see my name I think Austin thank you okay all right if it's okay do you mind if I I call again or I'll just hold your name James Robertson yeah I think we have guests plus our committee members so I think now that we've reached Quorum I'm comfortable with with us moving forward and um calling the meeting to order so that thank you so much Miss Lopez and we could catch other folks as they come in a little later all right thank so if there are no objections the committee shall adopt the March 5th 2025 meeting agenda hearing no objections the March 5th 2025 meeting agenda is adopted uh item 1.4 approval of the meeting minutes if there are no Corrections the committee shall approve the December 18th 2024 meeting minutes is

006distributed there being no Corrections the December 18th 2024 minutes are approved U did did did I just hear someone come on to say something I believe it was Miss adley okay welcome um so with that we're able to move into our primary presentations 2.0 and there are two items for discussion this evening we and we will limit each member's questions and feedback to 2.5 minutes per round unless a motion is taken for additional rounds so that would be two rounds per agenda item we're going to start with 2.1 the legislative update and the and the chair recognizes Joseph jauda for the leg legislative report thank you so much thank you thank you uh board member so I'm going to review a handful of bills that were proposed in this uh legislative session up in Annapolis

007that impa that have an impact on climate the Nexus of climate and schools as well as one additional item that I became aware of yesterday that I wanted to bring here manine first is hp61 it sorry out of breath there um it would uh require that all new or majorly renovated schools that have a new or majorly renovated parking lot install the uh necessary equipment to eventually uh install solar canopy so it's kind of a solar canopy ready parking lot it was introduced uh by delegate chudan and had a hearing on January the 28th and it's in the Appropriations Committee uh there's no Senate uh uh companion bill uh next slide one of the bigger ones uh is the renew act that's SP 149 HB 128 uh this bill uh would uh set a fee

008on fossil fuel companies um that they would have to pay into the state of Maryland uh including coal companies and oil companies I think natural gas companies it touches on schools though because some of the funds would go to two specific uh School related lock boxes for electric School Bus funds and then for uh heat pumps for schools um and well schools are of the one of the uh um possible uh groups that could get the heat pump funds but there are specifically uh leas are specifically listed in the Senate this is in 3E and in the house this is an economic matters um they both had both of those had hearings now one thing to note from what I understand is that in the Senate uh the uh this bill was changed it was

009amended to um change it from actually implementing this to conducting a study on the benefits of implementing this so uh obviously we don't know how anything will pin out uh but at this point it may not provide the funds originally intended right off the bat uh next slide um SB 818 and HP 66 School building energy use monthly reporting um and this would require each Lea to collect energy use data and provide that to the in AGC Commission on school construction and then the IAC would then be require well I guess prior would be required to set regulations of what what data should be collect it and then afterwards they would uh take the collected data and come up with recommendations for improving School building Energy Efficiency um I'm guessing given all the grants that

010ptcps has received on this subject that we probably would be pretty well set to comply um with us and um this is also in the the 3E Committee in the Senate and this is in Appropriations in the house and hearings were held in both the Senate and the house at this point um and uh the sponsors in the Senate are both uh Prince George's Senators uh next slide School sea belts uh this would require um starting in 2027 uh school buses to become equipped with seat belts for all passengers and also would require a public safety education program to be set up um this was uh sponsored by uh Senator Ellis in the Senate and Taris in the house who may recall was uh on our original climate change Action Plan Focus workg Group um

011and but the hearings were held in both houses as well uh next slide uh safe alternative walks to school oh the LA both of the last two bills this is their second time up as was this one uh so they had all had been introduced last session and did not make it through um this one SP 526 and HB 811 safe alternative walks to school and would require the board to every year post C on the on the website um uh ways for students that have that do not have uh bus transportation to be able to safely walk to school and um it also has some additional requirements on reporting uh this one was sponsored by Ellis in the Senate and terasa in the house um and the hearings were held for both um you'll

012notice that hearings were held for both as a common reframe none of these have U moved out of committee yet um unless they did this afternoon and I did not catch that um but as of yesterday that nothing has moved out um next slide uh this one's uh uh uh uh something that uh one of our members has been working on uh uh Mr Meyer I'm sure I'll have extra to say about this but uh sb13 and HB 493 Ruby Bridges walk to school day this would designate November 14th as Ruby Bridges walk to school day to commit commemorate Ruby Bridges um who on November 14th 1960 became the first African-American student to integrate into an all-white School in New Orleans and it also developed some model content educational content around the day uh this

013one I it looks like it was introduced later in the Senate and thus is going to the rules committee there but it was uh introduced into the house and uh a hearing was held on February 12th and both of the sponsors are Prince George's uh reps uh Senator Benson and uh delegate finel uh next slide Joe I can is this a good time for me to jump in with a quick update on this oh sure yeah I'll re I'll recognize you Tim all right thank you um I was uh just got a phone call from delegate Fels office before this meeting it uh the bill made it unanimously through the subcommittee with a favorable recommendation and then just today made it through the full Ways and Means Committee with a favorable recommendation and in addition

014to delegate finel there were 10 other delegates who had put their names on the bill and apparently during the Committee hearing today several other delegates raised their hand and asked to be added so I'll have the final count later but we seem to be getting some good momentum on this particular Bill and I'm going to be following up with the rules committee to see what we can do to get it scheduled for a hearing there wonderful news um next up we have SB 808 this is stop sign monitoring systems in Prince George's County at school bus stops uh this was introduced by Senator Augustine and the idea here is that uh uh there was a Bill last year that uh delegate Healey introduced that would allow for stop sign uh cameras in school zones and

015this kind of helps to fill in a gap because you can have students waiting at for a bus outside of a school zone along a busy highway so this would uh uh kind of fill in those gaps and allow for stop sign cameras uh outside of school zones if they're along a state Highway and that was uh the hearing was on uh this uh was today um in judicial proceedings uh next slide uh SB 779 and HB 1451 the climate Solutions now act affordability Act of 2025 uh this is uh the sponsors are gallian and ch some this would place this would allow um for uh an ability for certain things to be opted out of in climate Solutions now certain requirements if there was a um an explanation of economical practical practicability uh uh

016and one of the the most interest to PGCPS would be that this would allow um uh School Lea to opt out of purchasing electric school buses um if they claim economic uh impracticality um and this was held hearing was in the Senate already the house hearing is coming up next week uh next slide okay um s SP 134 and hp42 uh this one was also I believe uh introduced last session uh the waste of food reduction and diversion fund and Grant programs uh it does a lot but the big thing for school systems is that it would provide grants to eligible entities which include leas to implement uh on Farm recycling compost use waste food prevention and food rescue uh this was held the hearings were held in the Senate and the house already and

017uh Senators Hester and delegate Boyce uh were the uh sponsors uh next slide okay I'm going to punt to Pamela because I did not quite follow this bill but I wanted I knew it was a note for us HB 540 the Green School stewardship app yeah I think we're just going to have to call everyone's attention to it to take a look at it and review it it's it's my understanding that there's a couple of bills that are helping Mayo which an organization that we care very much about and partner with for our Green School designations I believe some there's they're the assembly is trying to help the organization of the resources to help more Equity um in Green School designation that there are schools in disadvantaged areas that are having that are not moving

018along as quickly and I think there's some of that in this bill but I I am going to have to ask folks to look this one up on their own and and just you know let me know if if you have an opinion or you know if we were if the board should weigh in on these but everyone of course is welcome to weigh in on on these bills individually as well um so sorry that I can't offer too much more on this one either okay next slide and here is by curveball this one's not legislation uh and I just became familiar with this yesterday so um uh but I want to bring it to everyone's attention the Maryland uh Public Service Commission has a case uh regulatory docket Cas number 9478 and what they're

019doing is taking comments on the phase 2 EV pilot proposals from Pepco b& and Semco um so three of our our three major Utilities in Maryland U written comments are due on the 28th and the hearings on the 9th of April and uh why this is important to us uh uh a lot of it is about making sure uh folks especially you know the schools and other entities ask to make sure that these plans really do consider medium and heavy duty charging uh you know the necessary uh power lines to get power where it needs to go um any necessary rate structures all that kind of stuff to make sure EV charging of school buses and other medium and heavy duty Vehicles is uh met I took a glance through two of them yesterday pepos

020and bg& it does seem like bg& is talking to the need for this type of infrastructure in their plan and I saw that our neighbors over Montgomery County their con contractor I guess Highland and made comments um in favor of what they were doing it did not look like Pepco said anything on this so um I did not look at semos uh um I I I do think they touch the very southern part of our County um so I I definitely would hope that uh um folks working in the school system on electric buses can look at these two to see if there's a reason to make comments and uh I think this is a good opportunity because I know that um after conversations we've heard from youall charging infrastructure is a real bug bug

021bear when it comes to this implementation yeah thank thank you so much for that I see that Miss Alon has raised her hand so she maybe to offer a little more on this and our opportunity to comment yes would you like for me to hold that to later board member of Boer Str or I think you should go now if it's you know directly related to this report sure thank you Mr jauda uh you are correct I am we are aware of bge's activity with the public service commission they actually had something posted back in January and uh we have been actively reaching out to Pepco as our next bus Lots will will be in a Pepco powered area and with regards to smco this is really great um because we are in need of

022some uh EV charging stations at the William Schmidt uh project so thank you so much for uh sharing this no problem and I think that also brings me to the end of the slides all right well thank you so much uh Mr jauda that was very informative and and just a little context for the board the we have a policy and governance committee that meets and we will be meeting again on Tuesday and I have we we've I have brought forward a couple of these bills that are you know very clear about you know that it's to our advantage to support and send in a letter but we do have to analyze all of them to be clear on our position and then um because both our board as well as M our Statewide board

023I'm I think I just froze I'm GNA start over um our board as well as ma our Statewide board have in our resolutions to support climate action related bills that would include say something like the composting Bill we can move forward as a committee with that letter without going to a full board vote so it saves us time so uh are there any questions of of Mr jauda all right I don't see any now but of course always feel free to follow up um outside of the the meeting uh we can move on to our next agenda item 2.2 the director of sustainability report so I will recognize now director Morrison for her report thank you thank you Bard member Bru Struthers and good evening everyone um for today's sustainability report it's not a whole

024lot but first start oh um Miss Adan do you have the presentation it's Miss Idan I thought I saw her you still there there you are I am I'm sorry I'm gonna if you don't mind give me five minutes I can send it to Rosa because we the Okay computer is doing something crazy yeah it's fine um I will go ahead and and just during this time just take the opportunity to introduce um a nearest member of the Department of sustainability and resiliency team her name is Christina Garcia Starling who joined us on February the 10th and with that I'll just have her just uh say a quick intro introduce your to the to the group hi thank you Dorothy um it's a pleasure to meet you all and and to be here good evening

025again my name is Christina Garcia Starling uh my background has been in international engineering sustainability and program management and I'm very excited to be part of the DS uh DSR team to implement the great work that you have done in putting the CCAP together um to increase our sustainability impact across and throughout the pgcp PGCPS community and beond thank you all it's a pleasure thank you Miss Garcia Starling okay so I will just continue without the presentation I don't know if I can access it from here let me just check real quick W cind also I have access to it no problem I believe I got it yes okay wonderful there you go okay so keep going this is just is just a cover slide I guess go ahead next SL next slide please okay

026keep going okay so of course you all are fully familiar with this um the a party items again this is just a coup slide just to um so I don't think we have any new members but just in the event that we did I just put this on here and basically um the director sustainability report uh looks at not obviously all these areas for the most part just highlighting um new things and updates that have happened from the prior meeting to date so it's really just a broad brush overview with a focus on a specific area and tonight's um focus area of discussion will be on um I guess party area two and three which focus on Energy Management so the building carbonization for print reduction as well as renewable energy source commitment so um

027next slide please okay we already have done the welcome so with regards to CCAP implementation I think board member buza Str is obviously um alluded to this that um given the current atmosphere at the federal level um we have to think about certain things and how the lack of funding or total elimination of of some funds might impact how we Implement uh the CCAP specifically how we deliver certain projects that relate to the CCAP so I just wanted to let everyone know that we are are um at I guess the at Administration level are working really diligently to um to try to assess um what we need to do given the the current um atmosphere so for example we may have to rep prioritize um things that um we were hoping to get Federal funding

028for we might have to kind of just not totally eliminate it but just kind of uh um move it down the road a little bit um so for example in the area of elect school buses um so you know obviously everybody knows that there's been a pause so what we um have been talking about inhouse with Chief how is given the budget shortage is that we are trying to minimize risk and we're going to we will be going for grants that are um sort of guaranteed for lack of a better term so not so much the federal grants but uh the state grants and of course mea Maryland Energy Administration has been really generous in terms of granting us grants for the electric school buses so while we look at potential um shortages on the

029on the grant side for the federal funding we're hopeful that there might be opportunities for example um in the healthy food space because it's it's um our understanding that this Administration um one of the priority areas obviously is um healthy foods so we're hoping no guarantees that you know funds may arise from there in which case we will obviously focus our attention to make sure we take care of those um take advantage of those opportunities so we are continually talking to not only Folks at the state level but we have Consultants who are looking at philanthropic funding as well so that's an area we're considering um just I think it was earlier this week um we had a meeting internally with the governor's office and they were uh talking to us about potential opportunities in

030terms of decarbonization so that was an initial conversation we hope to stay in touch with them and just make sure that we continue to advocate for potential fundings that might be available so on that note um I just wanted to just give a quick update on some of the grants that we have either just applied for or or we plan to apply for in the near future so the first one being obviously the mea decarbonizing School Grant um in the area of Interest one which focuses on building school capacity and we are hoping to as you all may or may not know we did receive a grant back in 2022 I this is before my time but I believe it was for FY 2022 and so what we're hoping to do is if we get

031these funds we will obviously continue to um do the work in terms of data collection energy data collection for portfolio manager and of course I think that Sheil and Jimmy may also mention that in their presentation tonight but and also we have included in the FY 2026 um some budget funds to be able to cover some consult work so we can continue to do data collection and we'll have the dashboards that can be used for schools as well in terms of um curriculum in education and then the other Grant which we are applying for is the mea electric School Bus program there's about 17 million uh dollars in that program and I think it's up to about three million per Lea so we are definitely applying for that I believe that is due end of

032this month if I'm not mistaken and um the third area of opportunity is in um the solar so mea area of um area of Interest number two I guess it's it's its solar support and that would help with planning installation of solar energy systems on school rooftops uh parking lots ground mounted solar so we are definitely planning to apply for that as well that's also dur in the end of this month so we we're very very busy between now and the end of the month to to get those those GRS out the door okay so next slide and um this is just a quick update we are continuing to work on the electric School Bus micro grid project pil project that we have going on at the Mullan bus lot buoy we have weekly calls

033on that and so that's coming along nicely and um with regards to climate resilient Land Management we were approach with the county department of environment and University of Maryland Finance Center to work with us on developing resiliency hubs which you know we're looking at the new schools are as opposed to be designed to be resiliency Hub so partnering with the um Department of environment at the county level as well as Unity of Maryland we will um develop projects that pertain to resiliency hubs and um initial conversations have talked about things like maybe been having Community Gardens um in those spaces so I think that that would be excellent if we can get some some projects going um in terms of Outreach and engagement um Prince George's County was well represented at last month's U Mayo

034conference and I believe we we spoke on things like the drivers for um Prince jurges County climate action which of course includes our CCAP and that all so fun and proud of so uh we got a lot of accolades for that um there was presentations on energy as well as um what we're doing with Recycling and composting so like I said P kind was well represented at that conference we we were allotted about three or four slots to present on the work that we're doing um and I will let I guess maybe later on if time permits because I know Donald and um James on the on the um on the call as you know our annual student environmental Alliance Summit is going to be happening April 9th at briensburg uh Park as well as

035uh a second day event on April the 24th at Buie State and what we're planning to also do concurrently is to have what we're calling the adult climate leadership Workshop so we have um the events for the students but then we're also going to have a concurrent session sort of like a breakout session it's going to be half a day not not we have not finalized a time yet but it's an opportunity for all the folks that are part of the CCAP implementation both internally and externally to meet as well as invite some other um leas to join us and for us to just talk about you know what our challenges are what the opportunities are and what how we can work together so more to come on that we're in the process of developing

036um the Flyers and then we'll be sending out to save the date uh shortly and lastly like I mentioned before um we will be doing a deeper dive into the party area two and three which focuses on Energy Management so I will should um board member should I just user them in now or did you do I have to pause for questions I should probably pause for questions right yeah we we can now take questions thank you so much director Morrison this is a great report really appreciate it are there any questions right now for director Morrison I see I see Joseph jauda hand up and Christina qua so so Joseph and Then followed by Christina um first I'd like to say that's all really good news and I'm glad you guys are looking at

037State and private philanthropies for funds given uh you know the challenge we're challenges we're hearing about what's going on at the federal level um I wanted to inquire if uh there is any need or any um any need for shows of community support with any of these Grant applications you know like letters of support or anything like that or if it's you know and if not if it's just something that you know that that's not helpful that's good to know to but yeah if you need anything as far as letters of support or anything we I think we would be interested in hearing thank you so much um Mr jakura and of course the answer is yes we will never say no to support um so you know as we continue to have these conversations

038and maybe potentially meet with the government his office I mean that might be if we can show a strong um if we have a strong showing of community support that would also help make our Cas stronger so definitely we will let you know as the as the need arises yes please do thank you thank you Joseph Miss hi yes thank you so much again for the great uh report out um it's so uh hopeful to hear that there are still going to be lots of funding opportunities at the state level despite the pullback on the federal level so I'm just really glad to hear about all the opportunities that are ahead of us um I was curious if you could maybe speak a little bit about the dashboard that you mentioned um and in particular

039I'm interested in what you said around the connections to curriculum um would love to just hear a little bit more of that thanks sure so and I like I said but we probably get into that into more detail when we get to number two with with Jamie but basically the the dashboard we hopefully when we have all the data we're going to have the Baseline data and then the dashboard is supposed to report energy use right so um and this is a way to show the students okay it's a rainy day today or it's a very cold day today so we're using more energy so I have not personally witnessed the dashboard and again like I said you know Jamie and others will go into in depth in that but but that's the thinking is

040that for students to be able to see how the temperature fluctuates I guess um or energy use more energy data fluctuates with say um temperature changes for example would be an would be one way to to look at that so right now unfortunately I know we had a dashboard but we don't have I think there was um some issues with it we don't have one currently but we will fix that as as soon as we get the the contracts renewed which have expired right now that would be a plus but you'll hear more about it in the presentation to come and to add to what director Marson shared uh with the dashboards that we had uh realtime energy management is it can be benefited by having uh dashboards and we had two robust dashboards our

041best was at new Fairmont Heights High School and new Fairmont Heights was built uh lead uh Platinum no excuse me lead gold I believe it was or lead silver and we were able to look at all the components the impervious payment pavement rainwater harvesting uh we also were able to look at the uh natural gas that was used uh throughout the day in other words you don't have to wait until the bill uh comes forth but you can see changes daily uh and when you see an anomaly you can say hey we got a Houston we got a problem here and we can attack it uh and then also at that school James Robinson as well as of Donald Bill and members of the Smith team we actually spent time with the Architects grima Parker

042and we were able to incorporate that with their help we we were able to customize that dashboard for new Fairmont Heights High School and they uh uh produced a lot of that data in the classroom with some of the science teachers thank you I'm time's up thanks so much thank you for that thank you for that Jamie thank you so much and if I board member business strs if there's oh somebody's hand is up okay go ahead I was gonna add one more thing to the report but go ahead or when we have Mr Meyer go and then you could go ahead and conclude at that that point yeah and I I had to step out for about 2 minutes so I apologize if you had already answered this question but out of the different

043Federal buckets of money or programs that either you were counting on getting money from or planning to apply from are there are there one or two areas that are for for lack of a better phrase the most at risk right now uh and that could also I'm asking the question partially because if there's some areas that just don't exist at all theone Cuts don't exist at all at the federal level right now that's where we can really Target some of our ass at the state level and other and through philanthropy well definitely you know I I think our hardest hit Area is an electric school buses because as you know that is it's very expensive to acquire those buses and so you know we were hoping to get federal grants not only just to get

044the buses but to also have the charging infrastructure that goes with that so that's that's a huge hit uh for us so so trans the transportation related yeah the transportation definitely and as a followup are you seeing was there any federal money on solar that you were counting on I'm sorry say that any federal money for solar projects that you that you would have been counting not necessarily um because a lot so what we've been thinking about doing with regards to solar is to put out um sort of like a master RFP for solar right and we're almost like looking at a P3 model of sorts where um we'll have somebody come in um build sort of design build install and also be responsible for orm and then we will pay something to that so

045that necessarily we not need federal grants per se um so yeah I think that you know I think that solar was not necessarily going to be I mean obviously if we if we saw the opportunity for funding would apply for it but that wasn't one of the ones but however we did apply for and it was a large chunk I believe it's 10 or $20 million for um uh environment Justice community changement and I don't think we're going to get that I mean it will be I don't know but I I just really doubt that and so with that project we were looking at um again partnering with uh with the university system the county department of environment to have students from our CTE program participate and we were looking at I'm sorry sorry guess

046my time is up can I finish can I just finish my thought or can I finish my thought okay all right thank you yeah so so yeah definitely that would have been an awesome program where you know the students would have been able to participate and you know going to feels like botany you know just zoology but we don't know what's happening with that we're not hopeful that it's going to happen however the department of um um environment with the county is still committed to working with us to do something maybe not in such a grand scale but we will be doing something so that's the good part thank you yeah thank thank you so much does that conclude your report it does but I just wanted to also just say that um you know

047thanks to yourself um board member brua strs and I guess Miss Khloe we had a a meet and greet with our new director which some of you may or may not have met her name is um Miss Mary Kirkland and she's very you know it was a really excellent meeting everybody was was excited there was a lot of energy in the room um she is she definitely has wonderful ideas with regards to having students participate in things like food testing so that we can increase the number of meals which we all know translates to obviously less food waste reduction which is part of our uh one of our CCAP goals here so we're excited to have her on board and she and I and everybody looks forward to working with the we call them food

048stakeholders to see how we can make a difference on I believe it's party area um six so that's all I wanted to add yeah thank you so much and and I did also hear from our uh volunteer parents and advocacy team that did get to meet with Miss Kirkland new director of Food Services food and nutrition services that they that it went so well that they're all committed to a regular meeting so that is a highlight as well making more progress in that area so thank you all right so thank you so much and now I'm excited for us to move to agenda item 2.3 our student engagement updates and we will hear from Miss novic who is our student member uh mentors and educator on our committee along with um let's see we have

049James with us today and Michael and Olivia and I don't think I've I've seen Maya come in and has so I don't think I see Sophia either so uh we are excited to hear from all of you and then also included to talk about student environmental Alliance planning the summit um Mr Robson and Mr Bell as as you would like to join in and add to that that discussion as well so but I'll I'll have I'll have Miss Nova kick off hello everyone um I I got say I don't think I've ever worked with such a productive group of people in my life is these youngsters and um we got a lot accomplish so I'm going to run through a little bit of a list it might take me a minute uh do I have

050a time oh no you're you you could have five five 10 minutes you know whatever is needed we want to hear from everyone okay and then I'll have the kids can speak after words each one of them will have their own version or perspective on what happened Maya is very sick and ask me to share that she sends her regards and apologizes for not being here but needed a rest so at one point during our work together I listened to a podcast on hidden brain and it was called when it's all too much and it was about a professor I think it's Stanford who was working with students and she noticed an extreme level of depression amongst her students she's a CL she was teaching on the topic of climate change and she really went

051through like kind of this personal understanding that it was a lot for young people to handle and so she worked with her students and what they came up with was that um what we want to induce in our students is not despair rather it is a feeling of being a collective stop being just I plug into the collective the planet needs us to come together and enjoy life on this planet so the joy amongst these youth is pretty amazing they're uh quite resilient and boy they get a lot done the first thing we did I got a little bit of a timeline here was it's only been one year since they've been on this committee um it was last April that they first joined and the then right after that they were at the student

052environmental Summit last last year um on one day on at Bladensburg and then one day at the conference and that was the first time that they worked together was at that um student environmental conference the four of them including Olivia and uh James then uh Donald I think reached out to them and said they're gonna film in Prince George's County on the topic of wild bird strikes and they want to put stencils on Windows to to alert Birds to the fact that this is a window don't bang into it so we coordinated with the Red Rock films and PBS and Michael and James will be in that video which will be on a it's called wild hope uh through PBS and that probably will come out in March or April and then um they did

053a uh teacher focused um training with about climate change action with a group that I guess Prince George's County coordinates with called Eco Amer and the student Michael and James in particular created a film about what what was the biggest influence in their lives that made that difference that made them want to be change makers and so they creat created their own presentation and it really made a hit with the teachers so then ego America said well look here since you're we can trust you and you're You're great and you come through and so they said now make videos for other students and Red Rock films recorded that and produced or not red Eco America produced that after that Eco America said look we give out a big award every year and we would like

054for you to apply for that award so I wrote that nomination and they were selected out of several hundred applicants to be in the top 25 and so then they had to put together some things that proved very difficult first of all they didn't feel quite ready to produce a they had to produce a film one minute to produce a film they weren't quite sure what their message would be yet they thought well we'll know next year and secondly they're in four different schools and they just could not find a common meeting ground and I would say if there's one thing that I would give advice about my role and their roles and this committee is that they need inperson time um to get together and get some things worked out and done they do

055a really good job on Zoom but they need to get together to problem solve to work through some things to actually these kids are really tangible and they want to get together and do things so I I think there should really be some thought about how to make that happen um they're very busy but I think that would be helpful um then they met with maybe you Pamela and um the County communications person and talked about how would they become communicators with their peers about the things they're doing with CCAP um I'm going to read for you the nomination uh that I wrote it'll only take me a minute and then I'm going to turn it over to them they needed a title so I called them the youth climate leaders of Prince George's County

056four middle and high school students Olivia Thomas Michael Witherspoon James dubon Garcia and Maya gerera serve as active members of the Prince George's County climate change action plan ad hoc committee at monthly meetings with PGCPS leadership these students help review action items share progress and ensure the county meets its climate goals their work Bridges Institution priorities with Grassroots activism creating a powerful model for Environmental Education and policy advancement so that's the part I would really like to help them expand on presenting how they are doing that these students are committed to raising awareness about the climate change action plan among students and teachers inspiring youth to participate in climate Solutions and promoting equity in climate education and community engagement they accomplish this through presentations at events like Prince George's County green Summit where they showcase

057PGCPS environmental projects and CCAP priority priorities they also contributed to the climate Ambassador training educating teachers and students about the plan and its importance additionally they have built a strong youth Network through the student environmental Coalition and the prince georgees County Regional Association of student governments fostering envir Environmental leadership across the district by engaging their peers and encouraging Educators to integrate climate Solutions into daily learning they've expanded the reach and impact of CCAP initiatives these four students exemplify leadership and innovation in climate action inspiring a new generation of environmental leaders while advancing just and Equitable Solutions in their Community their efforts not only drive systemic change but also ensure that climate action remains inclusive and impact act ful for all so turn it over to the students now because they do things that I don't

058know about all right who'd like to jump in first I can start hello everyone my name is Michael Witherspoon and um I am here hello um so so something that I would like to talk about um is the student environmental Coalition um so we've been doing a lot of planning with the C's conference um some people on this call have been part of that process and we're super excited for all the exciting things that we have coming um we also have an upcoming event we're doing an environmental career panel and we've also been working on getting our social media out so we've been doing posts on social media and trying to have more engagement and you know visibility within the county also yeah the student environment Coalition has been working on that and there one

059more thing um yeah communication oh yes yes yes yes yes thank you thank you thank thank you thank you thank you that say so so we did have a Communications meeting with um for Str and communication leaders or the communication people in PG County um so we did actually come up with a plan and we are working towards like we have steps laid out by month um we are a bit behind our timetable but we are taking steps towards getting our first videos out we're trying to do a video for each priority recommendation so students can really um students across the county can really see you know this is who we are these are our priority recommendations and this is the impact we made and how we're actually impacting like what we're actually doing so

060um we're super excited for that and we've been working on that too so yeah that's my part um man I guess I'll jump in here so uh hello all my name is James danan Garcia uh I'm a ninth grader uh yeah and uh I just had a little uh possible proposal that I I would like to get the opinion from the CCAP committee on um about priority recommendation number five which is regarding food waste um after discussing with like a bunch of people like miss novic my peers and um just getting the opinion from other students um there's a lot of food waste happening during lunches like I don't know if you've seen But there there's like bins and bins of bins full of trays and food waste that's just getting thrown away and um

061that really struck me as an issue so I I was like hey can we do something about that so um I had an idea where I think we should provide better school lunches cuz like the opinion of the students is that school lunches aren't really the best right now and I think that's one of the reasons why a lot of it is getting thrown away so um I was thinking that we could do a series of focus groups in collaboration with um uh this wonderful person I met Miss Tiffany horley which is a part of the strategic planning and resource management um we could conduct a series of focus groups to gain the opinion of students on how they feel about the school lunch that's being provided and then at the time um I I

062I think that there wasn't a dir of sustainability that like that role wasn't being filled and I think it was um Miss Morrison that just said that um they recently just got somebody to fill the role so I was thinking then we could take that information and then provide it to the person that is you know conducting all the food production that yeah so I just wanted to get the opinions of you all and what you think on that um yes Miss Morrison okay I just wanted to say well first of all thank you for that and you know we literally had a leadership meeting an operations leadership meeting this morning and guess what was the topic of discussion so um um Miss Kirkland this was her first meeting so it was an opportunity for

063her to talk about her goals and um the the the lady from the Strategic I guess you call it Strategic Management Group um mentioned this idea about meeting with students and um having a survey on different food we've been talked about having like you know food tasting and we're going to capture all that on camera there's going to be photos because we want to obviously highlight that and we definitely want to get the students input on a menu because you're perfectly right if the food tastes good and it's appealing students will eat it and if they consume the food we're not going to have so much waste so I just want to say that it's in the works more to come and I will report back to miss Kirkland to let her know to maybe

064potentially you know connect with you and just kind of maybe to share ideas oneon-one but that is actually in the works and we're planning to do exactly what you just suggested um thank you so much M Warson for the update um yeah I would be very glad if I could connect with Miss Kirkland on this project we'll make it happen thank you so much and then um another thing I wanted to talk about was um I think this idea was originally brought up by Miss novic um as well as school lunch is generally not being that the best Miss novic has stated that there's like a bunch of plastic bags and plastic cups that are just being thrown away in the trash somewhere around the thousands that's just being thrown away and although that's not

065really priority recommendation number five it's still an issue of like there's just this bunch of plastic that's being produced and then thrown away so that's definitely an issue I think we could tackle as students I just wanted to really quickly jump in and say um I kind of add on to what James was saying because I see that at school like even though um plastic bags have been banned from a lot of stores at school they're still using it for like breakfast and lunch and like every day so many are getting just used every day what they're talking about is that breakfast is served in a plastic bag so at our school say I do breakfast Duty let's say there's 600 children eating breakfast their breakfast comes to them in a plastic bag and so

066if there's 600 at kemore and I don't know how many schools there are in the county multiply six 00 a day times that many in the county to be perfectly honest that's how kids at Kem wor got the straws in Prince George's County band They drew attention to the fact that we used to serve little red plastic straws with the spoon and it came in a little p packet and the kids counted in one day how many plastic straws that was multiplied it by the number of students students in the county and then multiplied that by the number of days in a year and came up with millions of plastic straws that were being produced by princh geores County I venture to say it's millions of plastic bags being produced by Prince georgees County a

067day but that's Olivia's team she has a little team at school working on that and I mentioned to the students I go to north bay Adventure Center with um sixth graders every year and I noticed at North Bay I said to the team at North Bay why did your why are your lunches so trash now you used to serve like home style and they said that a at Co changed public policy on how food was distributed it has to be an individual servings and so I was wondering how much of that um impacted the decisions of uh Food Services on how things are H managed in a citeria yeah a absolutely and I've taken notes on everything reported so far so we could start formulating actions but I do see Mr Roverson wants to add

068jump into this conversation as well so this does not solve the problem but we are aware of the plastic bags and the amount of waste that's produced um there are organizations that want those plastic bags like TRS uh you can return your your bags to the grocery store or Home Depot or you know a store like that now the the onus is on the school slash a teacher to you know make sure that collection happens transport those bags drop them off it's it's a it can be a bit of a ordeal or a thing um there is not any systemwide apparatus to to collect those bags sort them and return them anywhere um but we have seen some schools do that I just wanted to put that out but it doesn't solve the problem uh

069at the point of um of serving breakfast yeah thank you for adding that context I see Mr Meyer wanted to um respond to the student presentation as well and it looks like uh Miss Alon as well I'm sorry I was I was on mute uh James beat me to my point I was raising my hand to to say that several years ago Mount rineer Elementary had done had done Gathering of plastic bags and materials for trucks Recycling and we never quite Quantified exactly how much cuz I just lost count of the bags over the years but we would just get a big trash bag or two that was filled up in the library and the school would call us whenever whenever it was starting to reach capacity to have a parent haul it away so

070as a kind of a follow-up on what James said I'm wondering if there is anything that we can do to to actively encourage more schools to do this um I don't know if we can require them but that's why I use the phrase actively encourage um just to get the word out to principles that that this until we solve the issue of handing out breakfast in plastic bags we can at least try to do a better job of recycling the waste uh and there's also with TX program you could also just use shrink wrap uh that with a lot of books come in and lots of other uh things in the schools that ultimately end up in the trash right now and then my and my second part was while we're talking about food waste

071do we know what the count is right now for how many schools have some sort of compost program yeah um currently we have 35 and we are hoping to up that number to 45 during the next academic school year okay thank you just I I know it's one of those programs that we have to ramp up bit bit by bit but that's good to know that we make progress yeah thank you um Miss Alon thank you uh students I just wanted to commend you great job um really um passionate about all that you're doing at your respective schools and I wanted to ask what schools do you represent please miss well I represent Parkdale High School Parkdale okay great you're G to get new lighting there okay oh you're getting a new lighting and Mr

072wither spoon I am a junior at the Academy of Health Sciences at Prince George's Community all right great and Miss Thomas um Middle School okay excellent and so my follow-up question for Miss Novak is Miss I'm not sure of your role are you a green Schools teacher there please I apologize if I missed that no that's right I'm the tag coordinator at kemore middle school but I also manage our environmental topics Club excellent to your point and what you mentioned about what the students are involved with have you heard about the energizing student potential program no that's a program that we've been par participating in since about 2017 and teachers can volunteer to participate annually and they actually bring the curriculum back to the classroom we've had about 35 or Plus or more schools to

073participate each year since about 2017 and this gives students the opportunity to present at stem fairs and and go on even Beyond Prince georgees County for other type of initiatives where they can you mention you know having inperson opport ities to interact with others and we've had many students to perform well even at the uh at University of Maryland and Drexel University and Illinois Institute of Technology so that may be something that you may wish to maybe put on the list for next year next school year we have it for elementary schools middle schools and we have a few high schools participating also thank you also there's a Summer Youth Employment Program I know my time is kind of running out but that uh kind of wrapped his arms around energy if you had any

074students that were interested in participating I believe we may be doing that again this year okay thank you thank you for all your hard work thank you I have just one comment um in general as a as an organization that is taking on environmental I would encourage at each step to say is what we're doing going to to require some other intervention so if we use bags then we have to have this other intervention where we collect them and send them out for somebody to do something with them if we don't use bags we don't have to do that I was gonna add I was goingon to add to that may be something that will come up I forgot to say that for our uh purchasing department we have a sustainability AP and maybe finding

075out what vendor that is that's delivering the lunches I mean the breakfast is in in plastic bags to find out what alternative means do they have because in Prince George's County there is a plastic bag um policy so uh we can maybe work with our purchasing department and find out what vendor that is and in in uh Cooper excuse me in collaboration also with director uh Kirkland and I just say that I'm gonna be very honest with this committee I used to have kids do a lot of recycling and after Co it was really evident that they were messing with things that were unhealthy they're doing trash pickup when they're doing Recycling and so that's a lot for 12 13 and 14 year olds to have to manage and so if we could use materials

076that didn't require recycling that didn't require clean up we don't want our children even though it's kind of teaching them a strategy it's hard hard work to put together a recycling program in a middle school of 1300 kids miss noac we lost your yeah and so I think it would be better this is just my final opinion to start way up here on these sustainable things and don't even bring them in things that are not sustainable have that start at the top and make your choices from probably smaller organizations that are producing more biodegradable products yeah thank thank you so much so many points well taken and many notes and I do appreciate having some Focus that Parkdale sounds like James Parkdale students are raising your hands to say we're ready for the next level

077of this work and also this is great feedback to take back to um priority area number six on the reduction of materials before they even get to PGCPS and the and we have a great project we have now we have a director of food and nutrition services in place and we can start to get to work so students I also just want to applaud you on all of your hard work I also know you're doing more than what you reported on I know you got the Eco Moco chapter going and the work there and so uh I know you're all doing so much so thank you I didn't I just want one more minute for whoever would like to jump in to talk about the uh environmental Alliance Summit because it's such a big and

078important event just to remind everyone the date I know we got a little bit from director Morrison but any a little more context so everyone could get excited about this because we'll all get to be invited to observe and and enjoy the day with our with um the students and faculty I think each one of you should just say what you plan to be doing on that day at the at the 29th maybe at the confer confence the the earlier one is more of an experience I think maybe Donald or James can speak to that differently but at the conference what's your plan young people let me jump in and just give the one minute overview and then I'll I'll turn it over um so as you heard it is a two-day event April 9th

079is at Bladensburg Waterfront Park as best shared it's more kind of Hands-On it's outdoors uh action oriented uh so we're still the Schmid Center and DSR are collaborating to make sure we get uh you know enough exhibitors out there and workshops for the students so that's still undergoing planning and then day two April 24th at Buie State University more conference style for the students more Workshop oriented um again still uh working out which presenters I'll share some of uh who's already confirmed us fish and wildlife uh Maryland Department of Natural Resources Virginia Tech's going to be there clean air Partners Anacostia Watershed Society Earth day.org uh Maryland Department of environment Prince George's County uh some internal folks like our arts department um Chesapeake Bay trust there's some more um and so we're continuing to have

080those exhibitors and workshop presenters uh sign up now but it should both days should be exciting uh I'm going to flip best question and just uh put it out there to this group uh not just the students but the adults you know uh what are you going to do there and because we've got lots of open spots uh for uh for exhibitors and uh Workshop presenters so that's kind of the big picture right now hey that's great to know if there's a message that we could email to our whole group to think on that and how they could participate please please let me know uh I will send you the email that we're sending our partners and um yeah I you know we're every if you've got you know if you work for an environmental

081or even a non-environmental um have that type of work um we want your organization to come in if they're prepared to engage with students great and then so one quick round from the students on anything else you want to offer about your preparation for the summit and uh then we'll move into priority number uh two and three presentation so um at the student environmental Coalition meetings we've been having discussions especially with um Miss lvin um about like the students roles um we've been discussing having um whether we're do student videos how much we're going to MC and how much we're going to present and we've also you know discussed keynote speakers as well or we we we would we were informed of the keynote speakers and um yeah we we were yeah so my role

082personally is probably going to be you know helping the MC and help things go smoothly wonderful thank you um James Olivia did you want to jump in at this point or are you ready for us to move to our next agenda item I'm watching for your mics to go off okay there goes James thanks um I just wanted to note uh so at the last C's conference that I attended um uh the CCAP students and as well as Miss noic we organized this like little table where we spread awareness about the CCAP committee and I was just possibly bringing up the idea of having something like that again just having a little table to increase awareness or we could present something else if we wanted to sounds sounds great and I know it's what I

083would also you know be excited to help bring awareness to this committee too so you could count on me to be part of that thank you all right so not seeing any other hands or mics going off I am going to move us to agenda item two .4 this is our uh Deep dive uh into our clean and renewable energy sources for Net Zero future priority two um and reduce carbon footprint from PGCPS buildings and priority 3 commit to renewable energy sources for net zero emissions future so I'm going to pass this uh to director Morrison who will introduce the speakers thank you so much thank you board who a Str so our presenters for tonight are U Miss Sheila Stevens and Miss Jamie Alon hello good evening do I need to share my screen

084or um Miss Aline can you or capable if you can I would say if you could share go ahead because overhead the internet is crazy I don't know why [Music] can you see my screen at all we can see presentation was up for a second yeah but then it disappeared okay it's go is that good yeah okay okay so yes uh good evening um definitely hard to follow such great um innovated ideas from our youth but and again I'm apologize we're combining two priorities so I'm GNA try to speak quickly but not too fast so but anyway good evening Sheila Stevens I'm one of the program managers with the Department of sustainability and resiliency here to just give you a broad overview on priority two and three uh status updates so to speak um director

085Morrison really dove into our funding challenges that we're experienced so I might for um essence of time I might skip through them but we'll we'll we'll do our best to include everything so I wanted to start off with the goals everyone on this in the audience is very familiar I wasn't sure if we'd have any members who weren't but to kind of go over what the goals and um how we're getting there so our CCAP obviously is founded off of the idea and the vision of PGCPS wanting to be Net Zero school system by 2040 with all of these you know these five items we'll make up that and that's how we achieve and obtain that lofty goal right but how do we get there so the CCAP being as amazing as it is is

086our driving force it's the vehicle that we're using to implement these great ideas and strategies to reduce our greenhouse gas reductions so of the CCAP we know it's made up of 58 operational mitigation and resiliency items but since everyone's familiar I won't kind of go into what the difference is between those three but for priority two which is the you know reduced carbing footprint from our PGCPS buildings it has four operational recommendations five mitigations and one resiliency adaptation action where priority three Is our commitment to renewable energy sources for Net Zero future that has two operational recommendations items two mitigations and one resiliency So currently where are we now with priority 2 and priority 3 um in the leftand column I have all of the operational recommendation items and on the left hand column is

087just kind of like an overview status update um things that you may be aware of things you may not but focusing on the private parters to participate in on all of our rebates or other um alternative or appropriate Financial programs um I didn't know if anyone would would be aware of this but currently language is included in our Master specification division 23 which is our haac and mechanical systems and division 26 which is our electrical division um division so all capital projects has this uh this language in their project manual or their bid specification so to speak so when it goes out to bid contractor looks at it they they will see right off the bat from division 23 and division 26 it calls out that they must be responsible that we would like for

088them to be responsible to apply for all rebates on our behalf or any other types of funding um so it's out there for any big systemic renovation project um and capital projects as you well know that um you know the overarching theme of of the climate change action plan is to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and so we had to start from somewhere of collecting the data so that we can easily track manage monitor all of our buildings performance um so in fy22 the pilot uh mea School decarbonizing grant program opened up for leas to take advantage of and we applied and were awarded and so that um an update on that it's been a it's been a little bit of a long road but it's been difficult the size of this system um but

089miss alon's done a great job shepher in these contractors and getting that getting this to finally come to the end and so we see the light at the end of the tunnel we hope to have Baseline data hopefully very soon which is just in time for the building energy performance standards that went into effect July of January 1 which puts us on the hook for reporting our benchmarking on our Administration buildings over 35,000 square ft so perfect timing we'll hopefully get that Baseline data but it doesn't stop there obviously we need to collect data monthly from now on into perpetuity right so we applied for the fy2 mea decarbonizing School Grant AOA aoi1 um we are anxiously waiting so fingers crossed that we get that funding and that we can continue pick up the Baton

090from um the fy22 data and then um start collecting that and have that so that we can then Benchmark our buildings um so great news on that just put fingers crossed that we'll uh get the fy2 to continue with that um as for building staff capacity and maintenance building maintenance and management not not much of an update right there I just want to be honest and transparent that there is not much of an update in that area however we do build our capacity uh for staff in the DSR department so we're super excited to have Christina uh Garcia Starling on board to complete our group um and start help moving the the needle here and then um consolidating PGCPS Administration and the central office staff we happy to report also of a great up um

091update that a location has been identified uh there's a lot still that has to go in motion for us to get this implemented but the whole goal is to take Central central office staff that are scattered out throughout the county um and Consolidated into one building um Prim for for the bulk of the uh central office staff so stay tuned for more on that um so in the mitigation recommendation section on the left for priority to uh for energy audits at all of our existing buildings so that we can rely on the data for the educational facility master plan cycle so that our capital uh programs department and um Sean mattick matti's team has an idea of how to really like where to focus our efforts on new builds but those we have ongoing discussions

092J Miss Alon has ongoing discussions with various vendors on energy audits so you know at the end if you have any question she's here she can certainly answer more specifically on what the status is but I do know that she's been busy having or engaging in discussions um clearly our goal is always to um choose not to go the fossil fuel route when we're building new schools and so we're focused on geothermal whenever and uh possible um except for there's going to be instances where it's just not feasible but hopefully we'll choose the lesser of the two evils of the fossil fuel so if it's going to be a fossil fuel school hopefully it's natural gas and then also something exciting to report on our strategic plan our t26 we have a newly implemented strategy

093that was introduced so this has this gives um priority to a lot more teeth um gets it out there to the whole system that this is um a very important strategy to P PGCPS so we're excited that that was at it recently um continuing research of uh potential implementing potentially implementing Wastewater thermal energy Technologies that's under evaluation but again this and the next two are one of those or some of those items that are just going to be ongoing in longterm implementation processes and then finally there's one resilience adaptation action and priority to and that's to design all new PGCPS buildings to be of resiliency hubs and so that is currently always under consideration when we're building the new schools and director Morrison did mention our collaboration with very in its infancy we did have

094a meeting with the um uh Prince Gees County Department of uh uh environment on collaborating um and to conceptualize resiliency hubs that that we can partner together with so again that's in its infancy stage and we'll hope to have something to report out to you soon moving on to Priority three um not really much updates and please Jamie you can correct me if I'm wrong but um currently there's not really an update that we can provide on purchasing on the wholesale Market at this point um until I guess uh contracts are up with brick pack and other sources but and then we've already discussed the the availability of dashboards of course that all depends on subscription renewals but we are as a department are prioritizing this um for the schools um we put it into

095our FY 26 uh budget to take the existing schools that have dashboards that were one up once operational but since have maybe like the subscriptions have expired um we try to get those renewed uh moving on to the mitigation recommendations so installing solar panels on PGCPS properties we have a lot of traction on that right now we're happy to say that the six Phase 1 P3 schools will have all of their rooftop solar installed this summer so we can add that to our portfolio um and that we are um currently uh we for for over a year now we've been discussing this community solar partnership where we can do um aggregate nit metering at a number of our schools that has been ongoing for a year and we are pleased to say that the PPA

096finally under legal review so that bll and that that's that's moving so we hope to have more to report onto that but that's exciting that that's something that's like you know short term in the in the near future and another thing that is exciting to report is that also in its infancy but we just had a kickoff meeting that there will be there is a ongoing feasibility study um that will assess all of our existing um PGCPS portfolio of sites for that that would be conducive to on-site Solar Development and um not much to report on battery backup power uh we were originally um hoping that it would be um we would have that offered at the mullik and Bulet that micro grid project that's in Buoy however that's been kind of removed from the

097scope of work for for a number of reasons um but stay tuned and hopefully we'll have some other opportunities to report on that brief overview of what's our Uh current rooftop portfolio we do have rooftop solar um on five existing schools and then we'll have six to come online hopefully this summer um and then I've kind of mentioned everything else about the community solar but that'll be equivalent to about two and a half megawatts of um solar power for that Community project um that's uh a direct result um a directive or a merger commitment from the Public Service Commission from the Ulta gas and Washington Gas merger and then currently we have 11 geothermal schools but keep in mind that our Phase 2 P3 schools are in design or under construction in seven of those

098eight schools which hopefully will take occupancy in the next two to three years um seven of those eight will be geothermal so we can add to that 11 schools and and increase that number as well um I'm going to kind of briefly go over the funding because I think we really touched this earlier but one of the things that I will add obviously with this new new administra Administration and this you know change of landscape of funding opportunities for um leas uh one thing that we are still pursuing because it is statutory in nature is the IRA tax credits um you know we're hoping that because it'll take an act of Congress that we may be able to slip in Ellen AOA as a potential project so we're in the we're working on that currently

099we're going to keep moving forward as if it's going to be there for us and and uh you know cross our fingers and hope for the best and then we've already kind of gone over uh State funding which is still very available and that we are pursuing actively um and diligently and then one thing I wanted to put into perspective because you know it's always good to see data right um the stressing the importance of the rebates through the utility providers is important and um Miss Austin's done a fabulous job of trying to capture all of that and we're still trying to work and make sure that we capture all of the smaller projects that may kind of fall out like under our radar so we're working with the Departments trying to make sure it's

100in the language like I said for those capital projects and those systemic Renovations but just to put into perspective how important and and impactful they are to us I put a slide together to show you oh I apologize that's a little blurry um to show you the last eight schools that we've had come online and the green line is the kwh savings that's calculated from the workbook that you do during that custom application on all of the energy efficient equipment that that building has um and then the purple bar is uh a calculation I just did basing you know just rudimentary you take the kwh savings multiply by in our average electric rate and that could yield basically shows you what a cost avoidance is that what if we had not installed that energy efficient

101equipment that would then cost us that much theoretically right and then the Blue Bar blue bar is the actual amount of the rebate for each of those um and this slide is just uh an aggregate of all of those together that kind of really puts it into perspective of how meaningful these utility rebates are um on the left you have the annual kwh savings the middle is the total EMP power Maryland rebates for those eight schools and then the cost avoidance so to speak is that nearly $900,000 annually that we were avoiding by having this energy efficient equipment that was installed in these new builds um so with that being said I'm kind of done with my portion I'd like to hand it over to Miss Austin who can highlight all the wonderful projects that

102she's been um spearheading and leading um so yeah Jamie you're up thank you so much Sheila great job um really great job given a comprehensive overview of where we are with priorities 2 and three with our climate change action plan truly it is a team effort and um everyone uh has been contributing at such high levels from multiple departments um when it comes down to when you're looking at where you can really attack first when you're trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in a facility and you can do this at home as well you know often times it's touted as the low hanging fruit you know what's the one I can really get to First and it may not be the most costly such as if you had to go and get a new HVAC

103system or a new light bulb it's going to be a little less cost L less costly for you to attack the light bulbs first thank you so much for driving for michila and so uh we've been very fortunate as Sheila said um the state of Maryland we are we should be very thankful that we have Empire Maryland now right about now because of this very uh frigid winter that we've had we've getting a lot of uh chatter about removing Empower Maryland so I'll talk about that as a as a as a challenge but hopefully we will continue to keep it Empower Maryland uh was established back in 2008 and it was actually established uh with uh our former uh president who reached 100 years President Jimmy Carter and it was designed to he spearheaded it

104to help reduce energy very conscientious about being a good Steward of everything he had including energy and so it's been around from 2008 and unfortunately a lot of people haven't didn't really take advantage of it in its infancy and when I assumed this role a little over 10 years ago I started getting information about these rebates and so I had to go and and try to figure okay where do we go to to start and we had a person over in food and nutrition that had been working to get some of the food and nutrition rebates but he retired and so nonetheless we started being able to take advantage of these um Empower Maryland rebates and not miss not miss out on them and one of the areas that we started attacking was the area

105in terms of lighting so every student um Mel and um other students that are here tonight James and Olivia every Olivia you're at a new school new new kinmore it's a great to be at a new school uh but every student and an educator didn't have the opportunity to you know go into a brand new school and so it helps to enhance the the learning environment it helps to make our learning environment safe and supportive when we can you know put some pain in the building and brighten it up I think Miss Novak was talking about you know she was was talking about students being depressed and and and mental health is so important and so while we're looking at this LED lighting from a standpoint of low hanging fruit but important to reduce greenhouse

106gas emissions it also assist on the side of mental health brightening up the building and so we've been fortunate to be able to retrofit now about 30% of our portfolio that's a combination of of of elementary middle high schools bus lots and administrative uh buildings and we received requests uh often and we H we have a running list that's been established my goodness since about 2016 2017 and and we've been working very uh diligently to to get those schools uh retrofitted lighting also is important uh for safety I mentioned safe and supportive but when you think about our bus lots and many of our bus drivers arrive very early in the morning when it's still dark of course daylight savings time is going to come in this weekend but when they arrive it's very dark

107and we we got calls and about oh when I go get to the bus lot there may be snakes out there there may be other rodents out there and it makes it unsafe for them so we were able to illuminate our bus lots to allow our drivers to have a safe and supportive environment as well as the other staff out there from our garage that work on our buses and so getting back to our schools we received requests and one of the requests that we received not too long ago was from Andrew Jackson Academy uh we got reports where the the the the Halls were just in the and the and the classrooms were just very dim and it was not affording a good learning environment for the students so we were fortunate to be

108able to upgrade the lighting there to LED lighting uh and as such uh we've been able to enhance the learning environment and reduce Greenhouse gas emissions thank you Sheila if you can advance to the next slide and these are this is how the savings are reported back to us from empow EMP power Maryland and you may not be able to see some of the numbers are reflected here however um it's there and we can make it available to you if you like but it shows the the savings achieved that Sheila alluded to um it doesn't report out in the uh the kwh savings yes it does it's going to eventually start uh this here reporting out in greenhouse gas emissions ICF which is the administrative branch that uh governs and um governs the Empower millon

109program they will be reporting out in greenhouse gas emissions so when you look at Andrew Jackson Academy if you had to retrofit this using our own funds this was done totally through the Empower Maryland rebates and if you look at the the the side the left- hand side of each of the three images if you see number one it's a little over $144,000 that was for outside exterior lighting and then um the first floor was a little over almost $94,000 and then the second floor was 61,000 so if you do the math you can see how valuable that project is about over1 $86,000 that's how much it would have cost to retrofit this school but by us utilizing the Empower Maryland rebates again if you look at your if you live in the state of

110Maryland and you receive uh a Pepco bill or BGE bill or Washington Gas bill just look down on the line item and you'll see the line for Empower Maryland this is what funds these projects this is where we need advocacy for continuance at least for our schools to continue to allow us to be able to retrofit the lighting in these schools we also received the rebate incentives as Sheila alluded to in the area of HVAC if we install a a qualifying HVAC heating ventilation air conditioning system that's qualified we get rebate incentives for that as well a chiller um steam traps uh uh gas powered water heaters and it's a lot more that we get incentivized on outside of lighting but again this is what we can attack most uh easily for schools that are

111not new next slide please sealer uh another school that we received the request from back in the fall 2024 board meeting do you remember this board member Boozer struther and so thankfully we've had the school audited and we will be able to retrofit this school before the next school year begins and so uh the principal is very excited and uh we took time to walk the building if you look at some of the existing lighting you see those those are t8s you see that pink uh tube light that's a T8 and it's pink and this is these are actual I didn't take a cover off but this is actually how it looks and there are dim areas in the school so that's another uh school that came up and we've been very proactive to satisfy

112and meet the needs of the school next slide please this is a project for James James Robinson and uh he has uh if he hadn't told you um of course we have green schools quite a few green schools here at PGCPS and James Robinson applied for our first green ribbon school and things are looking good so keep your fingers crossed but what we were able to do to assist James with a lot of the data when we apply for these schools they ask for a lot of data water data G natural gas data electric data and so James has has and his team have been worked very hard to submit the application and what we were able to do to help trim down and to show our efforts for his application we were able to

113retrofit the school fully interior and exterior that's for all of our projects and uh we are very hopeful that we will uh that burwin Heights Elementary School will become Prince George's County Public School's First green ribbon school so thank you James to you and your team for all of your hard work and we're pulling for you and James got another one he has another one in the fire now that's going to be Mata panai and we retrofitted Mata panai a couple of years ago matap panai Elementary school but that's going to be his next school that we're working with him supporting him for the next Green Ribbon uh School submission thank you Shea next slide and this is some of the data um in uh that supports what I meant about what has to be

114submitted for these uh Green School applications and green ribbon School applications and James uh worked very hard to help us uh with the a spreadsheet to actually upload the data into that um that really assists with the monthly information so thank you again James and these are some of the savings for Burl and height so if you add the leftand columns uh to retrofit the inside it was uh $72,000 little over $72,000 for the outside the exterior lighting uh that was a little over $188,000 so you get to begin to see the value of this program and it's not just installing the lights but we work with the approved service providers uh with warranties you're going to have an outage uh one thing about LED lighting is you know it lasts longer than the traditional

115fluorescent or incandescent lighting it's brighter it it uh emits less heat which brings about the energy reduction and so but unfortunately you're going to have an outage at some point and with some of the the power the currents that are going in and out of the buildings and when we have an outage sometimes it trips the circuit and then we have an out and so or we may have a flickering light so it's very important that our approved service providers understand what we do understand the mission for our students and our Educators and a safe and supportive environment so we have a warranty and those approved service providers uh come out and replace the lighting under that uh extended warranty period next slide Please Sheila yep all right wonderful thank you so much and I

116have one little extra that I I thought about so when I talked about safe and supportive environments I talked about those parking lots well there was Bladensburg High School that was in high demand for um just a greater Illumination in the parking lot because it just became unsafe there was a lot of activity that was happening in that area so principal fogner Jones kept oh well when are we going to get the lighting and so we were able to come forth through her I'm going to um Sheila if I can share now hopefully I can share this thank you so much I share this uh hopefully it'll share uh share this little video if I can find it let me see here where did it go let me see just one second for me and

117if we have any questions we can uh um get the questions waiting for it to upload it was there I had to try it again it's spinning hopefully it'll come soon maybe what I can do okay there we go let me see if I can share the screen now okay let's see okay screen share okay it may not share this time maybe I can share it on another occasion I'm trying but uh doesn't seem to want to allow me to share it but not sure if there are any questions maybe I can get it before we end but I was basically just going to show you the the parking lot and how that uh parking lot metamorphosized from a dark parking lot to a well lit and safe parking lot at Bladensburg High School and

118that was back in December 2021 thank you so much all right does that conclude the presentation director Morrison yes it does thank you thank you Jamie thank you Sheila yeah thank you both so much incredible work and detail and such a great update um so I'm going to ask that everyone go ahead and raise your hands if you have questions we do usually try to end the meeting by two hour you know no later than two hour mark which is coming up around 6:30 we did get a little bit of a late start this Zoom platform will be used by another committee at 7 so we are we are uh definitely watching the time um but you know incredible detail so but please uh Mr Roberson and uh M uh uh Michael um to follow

119one question and just a couple points of clarification So Jamie and Sheila thank you very much for your presentation I learned quite a bit I appreciate it job well done uh going to the US green ribbon school at Berwin Heights um I certainly uh cannot take full credit for that that was a group effort and the school is who applied so the principal and the lead teachers there deserve the most credit so I just want to put that out there uh a little Aster next to that uh due to the um uncertainty at the US Department of Education uh it is very unclear if Berwin Heights will actually be awarded the US green ribbon award it the school was nominated by msde uh but because of that uncertainty we're not sure and we are also

120putting Jamie U an email Madam Panay is probably going to go on hold not probably they are going to go on hold because of that uncertainty uh and then just a question uh kind of going back to Sheila's presentation do uh when you all um start working on the dashboard maybe this is more of a comment just remember the teachers are going to need professional development uh for those new subscriptions understood yes well hopefully we have an opportunity to provide the professional development that means we have a dashboard so thank you okay go ahead um Michael and Then followed um uh Joseph hello um I thought both presentations were really cool and I think it's really cool to see infrastructure changes happening in the county um I was wondering if there was like a list

121of schools that changes or like where where people can find the list of schools if the list is public of schools and um locations and buildings that the changes are coming to next yeah so do you mean the phase 2 P3 schools that are currently either in design or under construction cuz I certain like we can certainly get that list to that's easy but if it's and then also the capital um Improvement plan or program through the state the CIP it's it's known for that is how we get all of these uh big capital projects and systemic Renovations funded Prim it has to go through an approval profit process through the IAC so our Capital our CIP manual that our um Department of capital programs puts out is very valuable resource and it will it

122will put everything that they have in the queue in line um that they have a work that they want to get done so if you um can't find that I certainly could email you the link but it's on their website Al righty thank you you're welcome all right Joseph and then Christin um I first I want to say that excellent work that you all are doing on implementing uh recommendations two and three um I I don't know I it's just it's it's hard to hard to say just how great it is um I I I had uh two comments one was just that I um generation 180 came out with a recent report looking at solar installations throughout the country and when I zoomed in I could see Anna Rundle had so many of them

123and the district had of Columbia had so many and then we were kind of um missing U but seeing that Anna Rundle and I think DC as well has really pursued the PPA option and that you guys are looking into it really gives me hope that in a year a couple years that that map's going to be filled in for us um and then the other thing I wanted to note um I I mean I've been familiar with uh you know residents uh being able to take advantage of the Empower program I did not realize that was something that the school system could take take advantage of so I'm glad you brought that to our attention um to so we can continue to advocate for its uh funding because I know in the residential space

124it's such an important program and more people need to take advantage of it so thank you again for all you all done on on this um and and please keep keep it going because it's really important for the students thank you we appreciate those kind words yeah right thank you Christina yeah uh thanks again uh also just super impressed um every committee meeting we have I'm just impressed by how uh PGCPS is advancing on the different priority areas so just congrats on that um I was curious um if any of these new bills I can't remember if Joseph during your presentation earlier today you mentioned these um but Bill's like like recently heard about the Next Generation energy act um and then also heard about a renewable energy certainty act and I was curious how

125these could potentially play out for PGCPS um I think the renewable energy certainty certainty act um raises some potential for U deploying solar smaller solar smaller scale solar projects um on school prop properties I feel like that could be a really great way to do um to have more than I think I saw it was five schools right now that have rooftop rooftop solar but I'm curious if you all are tracking some of those um bills and um kind of yeah kind of what the implications could be for advancing some of these um priority areas for us thanks um to answer your question I'm not certain that I've heard about the uh bill that you've sh we've had a lot coming our way uh one thing to note is that with the six P3 schools

126that Sheila mention will multiply those out times two because it will be aggregate net metering meaning meaning with these and also with the ground solar opportunity we'll do the same thing so with aggregate net metering you have the opportunity to go and select a school and may be in a in a POS a position where where it's utilizing tremendous amount of energy an energy hog and what you can do is you can assign that school to that particular school that's going to be getting the solar and aggregate net meter in and you can offset the energy at that other school so at or other facility so at the six P3 schools two schools have been aggreg aggregately net meter to those sites so you're going to get 12 so it's you know like math and

127you look at factoring out it's becoming factorial and we'll do the same thing also for the ground solar now when we get to the next slate of uh no getting here close to time the next slate of blueprint Phase 2 schools um I'm must I'm believing that it's going to be aggregate net metering also but that hasn't been confirmed yet so we're multiplying out um you may not see it because you may just see the the solar on top of a school however when you think about aggregate net metering you're factoring out more schools and we equitably representing all districts all nine districts question sorry um really quickly in the last 20 seconds we have um Christine I also wanted to um mention I might have again I went through things very quickly but we

128are in that feasibility study early stages of identifying existing sites land not just uh looking for rooftop but actual uh land for ground mounted solar as well so our hopes is to just continue to add to the portfolio um of our of our solar production that we have so stay tuned for more to come last I'll also add replacing roofs when we replace roofs we're trying to add solar at the same time if it's rooftop solar well great well thank you all so much I don't see any more hands and I know we do have to adjourn the meeting because of the time but this you know I again want to Echo what everyone said I think I this is a fantastic meeting tonight and I appreciate with all the presenters this evening and we

129just learn so much and I feel very caught up as well there's a lot that I that that's what I love is the plan is so big and it's in every aspect of the school system that that it's it's working and the fact that no individual can really keep up anymore is just a testament to the Deep work in the system so I appreciate it and we will uh get moving on some of the project ideas that um students that you brought forward so thank you so much so I will now move to adjournment um the next virtual climate change action plan ad hoc committee meeting will be held on April 23rd at 4:30 pm um please continue to check the PGCPS board web page for more information and updates and thank you everyone for

130the meaningful discussions there will be no further business the time is now 6:34 p.m. and the March 5th 2025 climate change action plan ad hoc committee meeting is adjourned have a great night everyone thank you thank you evening everyone take care good evening everyone