Stephen Boese, NYS Director, 212-482-0204, 518-462-0632
(Albany) Today, Healthy Schools Network, Inc., a national environmental health organization founded in Albany, NY in 1994, receives a national award in San Francisco for promoting healthy and green school designs, and stands with the Commissioners of Education and Environmental Conservation and the President of NYSERDA to celebrate New York State's unique school design manual, NY-CHPS. At this same event, state officials are also honoring the East Hampton School District for designing and building NY-State's first CHPS-compliant school.
New York State
Said Stephen Boese, Healthy Schools Network-NY Director, "This is an exciting day. New York clearly leads the country in understanding that children need healthy and efficient school houses. We congratulate all the state agencies and the East Hampton School for their hard work and hope
that many more schools will now follow suit". Boese began working with HSN in 2002 and in 2005 was appointed to serve on the state task force that advised NYSERDA and SED on the development of NY-CHPS.
Said John D. Shaw, Healthy Schools Network Board President: "I am delighted today with recognition of new school designs in both New York City and San Francisco. HSN is a national leader in promoting designs that are friendly both inside the four walls (to the people that study, teach, and work there - "healthy"), AND outside the four walls (to the environment and energy efficiency - "green"). I am particularly pleased to congratulate the East Hampton School District for implementing these designs. They are a tangible testament to New York's leadership in promoting these designs through the NY-CHPS manual and represent HSN's true reward.”
National
Said Claire Barnett, founding Executive Director, Healthy Schools Network who received the National CHPS Champion Award for promoting Healthy and High Performance Schools nationwide, "Healthy Schools Network's Board and Staff are honored to receive this award from the Collaborative for High Performance Schools (CHPS). Our call to action that began in 1994 has never wavered: all children not only deserve but need healthy learning environments."
At the CHPS reception on Wednesday, Healthy Schools Network also gave CHPS founding executive architect Charles Eley a "National Healthy Schools Hero Award for 2007". CHPS first-ever annual conference is in San Francisco today.
Healthy Schools Network began in Albany by promoting new comprehensive policies to protect children and to make schools healthy. Since then, it has created a nationally unique clearinghouse to assist parents, personnel, and schools with environmental issues, fostered scores of local and state-based coalitions, worked with the Clinton and the Bush Administrations, and helped to shape and secure state and federal laws, programs, and funds to address unhealthy schools.
National Board Expansion.
Healthy Schools Network, Inc. under the leadership of Board President John Shaw, CEO, Next Wave, Albany, NY has also expanded its Board with newly elected Board Member Joellen Lawson of Newtown, CT. the founder of the CT Foundation for Environmentally Safe Schools, Carolyn Smith-Evans, a Salem, Oregon special education teacher and the Co-founder and Chair, NEA's Healthy Schools Caucus, as well as the addition of the Maryland-based National Association of School Nurses, Amy Garcia, Executive Director. In the last year, the organization launched a new national 'green cleaning' initiative to assist agencies and nonprofits to promote the use of green cleaning products in schools; it will add New England-based staff in October.
Said Mr. Shaw, “I also welcome our new Board members. While new to these positions, these individuals have already worked with HSN over the years to promote children's environmental health. Their new efforts will help focus Healthy Schools Network and our collaborative partners across the country to promote a healthy learning environment for our children as the norm."
Healthy Schools Network is a national not for profit environmental health organization dedicated to ensuring that every child has an environmentally healthy school that is clean and in good repair, through research, information, and advocacy. Its Clearinghouse has offered information and assistance to parents and schools in every state, helping some schools to win US EPA awards. It supports policy reforms and funds to address school environments in New York and federally with state and national partner organizations through the national Coalition for Healthier Schools. It has secured ongoing Minor Maintenance and Repairs appropriations in New York, and helped to win $1.2 billion in federal funds to repair schools, as well as the enactment of the federal Healthy and High Performance Schools provisions signed into law by President Bush in No Child Left Behind.
Barnett has chaired two US EPA task forces on school environments (2002, 2004) and co-chaired the Schools Policy Panel of the prestigious 9th International Triennial Conference on Indoor Air in Monterey, CA in 2002.
For more information, please visit www.healthyschools.org.
