As students at New York City schools increasingly experience the impact of environmental injustice, climate activists are urging Mayor Eric Adams to electrify, ventilate, and retrofit hundreds of public school buildings in the city by 2030.
Schools in New York City have long lacked resilience to environmental challenges, particularly in communities of color. Because Black, brown, and low-income children are disproportionately exposed to air pollution, they also suffer from higher levels of asthma. Poor air filtration regularly leads to students missing school, and asthma is one of the major drivers of chronic absenteeism in NYC public schools.
More than 150 New York City schools flooded in September. Some teachers said they were forced to wade in dirty, brackish water to enter their building, and one school in Brooklyn was forced to evacuate. About 28% of New York City public school buildings are at risk of extreme stormwater flooding, with the majority located in Brooklyn and Queens.
“It’s not a healthy environment for students because there are air quality concerns given just the condition that a lot of public schools are in right now,” said Shravanthi Kanekal, the resiliency planner for the NYC Environmental Justice Alliance (NYC-EJA). “When you add the element of climate emergencies, it’s an additional burden that a lot of communities have to face, especially when it comes to schools in [environmental justice] communities.”
Buildings are NYC’s largest polluter, with schools fueled by oil and gas making up a large source of emissions. As public schools are owned by the city, investing in the electrification of these buildings is a direct way the city can reduce the impact of building emissions while reducing long-term costs of environmental damage on infrastructure.
“If you think back over 10 years ago during Hurricane Sandy, New York City lost $19 billion, which was just for the infrastructure costs in the aftermath,” said Faiza Azam, the climate and labor organizer for the Alliance for a Greater New York (ALIGN).
Advocates say electrification, ventilating, and retrofitting are urgent priorities that need to be implemented to protect students and staff and curb a large source of emissions in the city. But they are frustrated that the mayor’s new budget proposal from January fails to make sufficient inroads into addressing the issue of environmentally unfriendly schools.
“We are left wanting and disappointed by signals of what the administration’s priorities are when it comes to climate and environmental justice,” said Eunice Ko, deputy director of NYC-EJA. “That is further reinforced with some of the things we have seen leading up to the budget. AdaptNYC, PlaNYC––these signature marquee climate strategies that the city is developing fell short of concretely addressing the climate risk that the city is facing.”
In 2022, Adams announced that he would allocate $4 billion toward electrifying 100 schools and eliminating heating oil by 2030 through the “Leading the Charge” initiative. However, activists say this funding is not enough.
“We’re trying to hold them accountable because there’s money left on the table, but also that’s not enough because we’re talking about a hundred schools with a school district that has a little over 1,800 schools,” Kanekal said.
Adams’ November 2023 Financial Plan posed significant cuts to sanitation, education and youth programs, and climate resiliency. The new budget proposal reverses some of those proposed cuts, including restoring interim flood protections climate activists pushed for. However, significant cuts to the education budget remain, particularly due to the expiration of federal pandemic aid.
“At a time when we have a youth mental health crisis, record-high student homelessness, systemic violations of the rights of students with disabilities, and an increase in newly arrived immigrant students enrolling in our schools, we cannot afford to roll back these important programs, especially those serving the students who need the most support,” said Kim Sweet, the executive director of Advocates for Children of New York, in a statement.
In his announcement of the new budget, Adams said the city’s economy was seeing unanticipated growth, resulting in better-than-expected tax revenue that allowed for more funding to be restored. But activists are still frustrated that the city has still not provided sufficient funding for school retrofitting and electrification under the promising conditions of better economic conditions and greater revenue.
“Currently, the mayor is not investing in green, healthy schools,” Azam said. “He has been investing in austerity, and instead of doing so, he should be investing in New Yorkers, especially for the students, teachers, and school staff in environmental justice communities who are drastically impacted by the effects of the climate crisis.”
In January, New York State Gov. Kathy Hochul announced the availability of $100 million through the Clean Green Schools initiative, which would offer funding to schools across the state to advance construction projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve building resiliency and air quality, prioritizing disadvantaged communities. The initiative comes with other initiatives being pushed at the state level to improve the transition to clean energy, cut utility costs, and invest in environmentally friendly capital projects. Climate activists are still demanding that the state government go further to invest in climate justice initiatives. Despite the state funding, city funding will still be needed to have a substantial impact on the environmental resiliency of New York City schools.
“As climate activists, we are really talking about the health and safety of kids actually being at schools,” Kanekal said. “We are trying to understand where this mayor is coming from when we’re not even providing a safe space for kids who spend the majority of their days in these public schools.”
The Climate Works for All Coalition, led by ALIGN and the NYC-EJA, laid out the mission for creating “Green, Healthy Schools” in a blueprint report for Adams in May 2022. Green, Healthy Schools are schools designed to address the immediate and long-term environmental impacts of fossil fuel emissions that classrooms in inefficient school buildings face through air quality and structural improvements.
The Green, Healthy Schools campaign specifically demands that Adams electrify and upgrade 500 public school buildings by 2030, prioritizing schools in communities most affected by environmental injustice, and make New York City Public Schools a zero-emissions school district by 2040.
“When we talk about green schools, we are talking about better ventilation systems and HVAC systems in schools,” Kanekal said. “We are talking about not having a school building relying on fossil fuel infrastructure like a gas boiler. Moving away from that and having technology that doesn’t emit onsite in school buildings.”
Green schools would also aim to be more efficient, including sealed windows and better roofs that would allow for the installation of solar panels. Ko added that the idea of green schools also allows for an educational opportunity, giving the students the chance to learn about solar installation and deployment.
“Students, teachers, and school staff deserve a clean and healthy learning environment and workplace,” Azam said. “Ensuring that Mayor Adams invests in Green, Healthy Schools will create millions of jobs, save the city billions, and protect New Yorkers, especially those in working-class communities who live in areas that are historically disadvantaged.”
