Environmentally Healthy School Recognition

ADEQ is sponsoring a new recognition program to help individual schools become Arizona Environmentally Healthy (AEH) schools. This program recognizes policies and actions taken by schools to help ensure a healthy and safe learning and teaching environment. This checklist is to be used by school principals, or their designees, to certify to ADEQ that the school has taken action to safeguard their students, faculty, and other personnel against environmental pollutants and other potential environmental risks.

• Green Schools

Air

ADEQ's Children's Environmental Health Air Outreach Campaign focuses on tools that can be implemented at or near schools either by the school or by a parent-teacher type of association.

• School Idling Reduction Program
  • School Bus Idling Reduction Program
  • Idle Reduction Toolkit
• Indoor Air Quality
  • Asthma Friendly School Toolkit
• Outdoor Air Quality
  • ADEQ's Air Quality Flag Program
  • How to Build an AirCasting Air Monitor -- (PDF)
• Pest Management
  • Integrated Pest Management
  • Pesticide Use in Schools and Public Health Facilities -- (PDF)
  • Pesticides: Arizona School and Childcare Law
  • EPA Managing Pests in Schools
  • EPA Model Pesticide Safety and IPM Guidance Policy for School Districts -- (PDF)
  • EPA Reducing Pesticide Drift
  • EPA Pest Control and Pesticide Safety for Consumers
• EPA's Idle Free Schools Toolkit

Waste

• CDC: School Chemistry Laboratory Safety Guide
• Schools Chemical Management Toolkit -- (PDF) (PDF en español)
• U.S. EPA: Safe Chemical Management in Schools

Water

World Water Monitoring Day ™ is an international education and outreach program that builds public awareness and involvement in protecting water resources around the world by engaging citizens to conduct basic monitoring of their local water bodies.

An easy-to-use test kit enables everyone from children to adults to sample local water bodies for a core set of water quality parameters including temperature, acidity (pH), clarity (turbidity) and dissolved oxygen (DO). Results are shared with participating communities around the globe.

World Water Monitoring Day is officially celebrated on September 18; however, the monitoring window is from March 22 (World Water Day) until December 31. Participants are encouraged to celebrate with WEF and IWA in September or to observe their own WWMD anytime during the extended window. The deadline for submitting data to the WWMD database is December 31.

Reports from Arizona schools:

• Snowflake Intermediate School 4th and 5th Graders test Silver Creek -- (PDF)
• Round Valley Middle School 7th Graders test the Little Colorado River -- (PDF)
• St. Johns Middle School 4th Graders test Patterson's Ponds in St. Johns -- (PDF)
• White Mountain Boy Scouts test Fool Hollow Lake in Show Low -- (PDF)

Contact Us, if your school would like to participate.

Additional Resources

• U.S. EPA: Schools Programs
• U.S. EPA: School Flag Program

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