Below is a Schools for Climate Action Press Release about the Sonoma County Office of Education "Commitment to Climate Change Action" Resolution of 2.1.18
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Below is the monthly update and action item sheet.
Thank you Superintendent Herrington and Trustees Hernandez, Kostas, Cuclis, Leonard, and Wittke-Schaffner! Schools for Climate Action work hard to ensure that your courageous and compassionate example will inspire school boards and school board members across the country to speak up for climate action in order to protect students. The SCOE Climate Change Resolution is probably the strongest statement by any school board in the nation about the need for climate action. It's mention of carbon pricing as a bipartisan policy solution and it's call for local schools to engage in non-partisan climate advocacy can help build public will for science-based climate policies which will protect future generations. Thank you for your inspirational leadership. We don't have time to waste. Please share this SCOE climate change resolution widely! And, sign up for the Schools for Climate Action email list.
Is the Spiral of Silence Real? SOTU and Response suggest Yes! Fortunately, We all have voices2/1/2018 On Tuesday, 1.30.18, leaders from both parties spoke to the American people laying out visions of a bright prosperous future. In these speeches, there was silence about how we, as a people, will protect our children and future generations from the threat of climate change.
Something is going on here (spiral of silence). I do not think we as a people have intentionally abandoned our children and all future generations. I do not think the speeches on Tuesday night represent the sum total of ideas, values, and beliefs in our socio-ecosystem. But a word cloud of the most important public discourse by the most powerful people in our socio-ecosystem on Tuesday night would suggest that in important contexts, we do not have the vocabulary or will to speak about the single greatest threat our children and grandchildren will face. (For a poetic take on this issue please read Jane Hirshfield's brilliant poems Global Warming and Let Them Not Say). What makes this silence even more stunning is that we already possess the technological and policy tools to manage the threat to our offspring. All that is lacking is public will. Here's the tricky part, that could fill a person with despair: If we are not talking about the issue, how do we build the public will to deal with it? Don't despair! The beauty of this spiral of silence dilemma is that all we have to do to change it, is to speak about it. We all have the power to break this dangerous spiral of silence. Anyone can speak up for climate action to protect our children and as we begin to organize our collective voices into a chorus, we will shift paradigms and generate the public will to deal with this issue as a nation and as a people. Each one of us has an incredible amount of power to break the spiral of silence about climate change by speaking truths about it in contexts where there has formerly been silence about it. We can speak about the disconnect between public discourse, between institutional priorities, between investments of resources and the common hope we all share for a bright future for our children. We each have a tremendous amount of power to speak up and break the spiral of silence. As educators and leaders of educational institutions, we can sing the prologue in this chorus. We work in an institution grounded in science, we know that climate change is real and that it is likely the greatest threat our children will face collectively. We don't have to be silent. As educators, we stand at the interface between the generations. We can perceive in unique ways the harm climate change will inflict since we work closely with those who will bear its full burden (our children). As educators, we can speak up collectively, in a non-partisan way, to close the feedback loops and break the spiral of silence on climate change. We can help unify our great nation around a common dream---of ensuring a bright future for all of our children by addressing climate change. Our collective voices can help drive a broader paradigm shift that will protect our current and future students. In the past two months, two school boards have passed identical Climate Change Resolutions. (Sebastopol Climate Change Resolution and Ross Valley Climate Change Resolution). Echoing the California PTA Climate Change Resolution of 2015, they state that "climate change is a children's issue". Furthermore, they call on "all leaders and all institutions" to address climate change. This is a non-partisan paradigm based on logical conclusions from objective observations of our socio-ecosystem and our best scientific thinking. Evidence suggests that not all elements of our socio-ecosystem share this paradigm (consider the silence on Tuesday night). However, if more school boards follow SUSD and RVSD's example, their organized and collective voices on the matter could be powerful. If more leaders and institutions had the paradigm expressed in the SUSD and RVSD climate change resolutions, we, as a society would step up to manage this significant threat to the well-being of all our children and future generations. The Schools for Climate Action campaign believes that at least 50,000 school board members probably already agree with the language and intent of Sebastopol Union/Ross Valley climate change resolutions. There are currently efforts in 12 more districts to pass similar resolutions. Please help us engage the other 13,988 school boards on this issue. Please help us empower school board members across the country to speak up to protect our current and future students. Please share the SUSD/RVSD resolutions widely. There are 15 million high school students and 3.1 million teachers in the country working in 14,000 school districts led by 90,000 school board members. Together, we can help break the spiral of silence on climate change and build the public will to do what it takes to manage this significant threat to the well-being of our children and future generations. The Climate Change Resolution passed by SUSD and RVSD is a tool we can use to organize our collective voices in a way that will shift paradigms, build public will, and create the conditions for the implementation of science-based climate policies at all levels. Sign up for our mailing list and start emailing every school stakeholder you know an example of the SUSD and RVSD climate change resolutions with a simple question, "Look what these two school districts did...do you think we could do the same?" (Hint: the answer is "yes"). On Thursday, January 25th, 2018 the Ross Valley School District Superintendent, Assistant Superintendent, and Board of Trustees spoke up for climate action to protect current and future students when they passed Resolution #07-17-18 "In the Matter of Climate Change." Thank you for our courageous and compassionate leadership. I want to highlight three things about this inspiring act: 1. Resonance: This is essentially the same resolution at the Sebastopol Union School District's climate change resolution. The resonance between the two resolutions amplifies the signal they send and maximizes the public will they help build. Both school districts are coherent and aligned on this matter. 2. Self-Organizing: From the perspective of an outsider/advocate, the passage of this resolution was essentially spontaneous. There was no organizing effort to get this resolution passed. The proximal cause was an email from a former student to the Superintendent. This suggests that there is a latent, built-up desire on the part of educators, educational leaders, and educational institutions to speak publicly about climate change. For many of us, as adults who have chosen careers nurturing the younger generations, a cry of grief gets stuck in our chests when we observe the trendlines in our socio-ecosystem. Some of us are are distraught by the lack of public will to deal collectively or truthfully with the climate burden our generation has put on the backs of younger and future generations. As educators and educational leaders, we are eager for the opportunity this resolution provides to state publicly and in an organized way the truth we often bear privately. Silence on the need for climate action undermines the institutional coherence of schools and school districts. Speaking up for climate action strengthens schools as institutions. 3. Positive Feedback Loop: The threshold for action lowers each time a school district steps forward and speaks up for climate action. News of this resolution activated individuals or teams in at least 6 other school communities to take action and begin working towards school board climate action resolutions in their own districts. The Ross Valley example suggests there are probably additional efforts in districts we are not yet aware of. Thanks again, Ross Valley School District. Please keep spreading the word. We think there are at least 50,000 school board members who would gladly pass a similar resolution. They just may not have heard of the important precedent set by the Sebastopol Union and Ross Valley school districts.
Kai, Lola, and I gave a presentation at the CCL NorCal Conference in Menlo Park. Here is a link to our slide deck. We didn't make it through all of the slides in the presentation. Empowering Your Local School Board to Speak Up for Climate Action.
We just had our 6th monthly meeting and momentum is building on our local effort to empower school boards (and teacher's unions, student, councils, and PTA's) to speak up for climate action to protect current and future students.
5 new school stakeholders joined us for the first time including: -a local non-profit leader who supports networks of teachers interested in sustainability (Solar Schoolhouse) -a senior and One Planet leader from CREDO high school -a CCL member and retired educator in the Santa Rosa city school district -a parent of 2 youth in the West Sonoma Union High School District -an elementary teacher in the Oak Grove School District Together, we are creating opportunities for youth to empower adult elected leaders to speak up for climate action in a way that can generate public will for science-based climate policies. Donnella Meadows, one of the founders of complex-systems theory, says that the 2nd most powerful lever for changing complex systems (like our socio-ecosystem) is to change paradigms. The act of youth empowering adults creates a paradigm shift. Youth can empower adults to speak publicly their common (but in most public contexts, private and unspoken) belief that climate change is a children's justice issue and that the adults in our society should take action to address it. This simple dynamic of youth empowering adults to speak publicly the climate truths they hold privately creates a paradigm shift. If we can replicate this dynamic---youth empowering adult leaders---in just a percent of the 14,000 school districts across the country, it could generate significant public will for science-based climate policies. If you are a school stakeholder (community member, student, parent, teacher, school staff, school board member) please help this effort snowball. Like this page, post, and reach out to your school contacts and the school board members your community has elected. Every individual school board member and every school board that speaks up publicly makes it that much easier for subsequent school board members and school leaders to speak up publicly. Speaking up for climate action to protect children could become a norm and would resonate very well with schools as institutions. This effort can snowball. All school boards need to do is state that "Climate change is a children's issue" and encourage "all elected leaders to speak up for and take climate action in order to protect our current and future students". These are not political or partisan statements. This are simply conclusions that follows logically from scientific observation of our socio-ecosystem combined with the most deeply held, foundational values of our schools (that adults should protect children and create the conditions for future their success). Institutional silence on the need for climate action can undermine school institutional coherence. Thanks to everyone who participated in the webinar tonight.
Here's a link to the slides: Empowering Local School Boards to Speak Up for ... Here's a link to the recording: Schools for Climate Action Webinar 1.11.18 We are planning to do monthly follow-up ZoomMeetings to support teams and gather information on how this effort is working in other districts. We will do a blog post when we schedule February's meeting. When: Thursday, Jan 11, 2018 5:30 to 6:30 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
Register in advance for this meeting: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/0c7ee41242195a247510d14dfea9e911 After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. Here's a description of the webinar: We plan to inspire and support youth-adult teams empowering school boards in their own districts to speak up for climate action in order to protect current and future students. Our training will share: 1. Sebastopol Union's Climate Change Resolution 2. Ideas for creating a multi-stakeholder team in your own district; 3. Steps to engaging and empowering school board members to speak up for climate justice; 4. Multiple benefits of school board climate change/climate justice resolutions; 5. School board climate change/climate justice resolution ideas; 6. Next steps 7. Q and A We're hoping to help Sebastopol Union School District's great example start a snowball effect. There are 10,000 school boards in the nation with over 50,000 school board members. These school board members are the only elected leaders with a singular focus on well-being and future success of children. We can empower them to speak up for climate action and climate justice! This will help build public will to enact science-based climate policies which will protect current and future students. The above button has a link to a Google form individual school board members can use to go on record stating that climate change is a children's issue and encouraging elected leaders at all levels (local, state, and national) to speak up for climate action and to take measures to reduce greenhouse gases in order to protect current and future students.
While we encourage school boards to discuss and pass climate action or climate justice resolutions as a whole board, there can be multiple reasons for school board members to speak up as individual elected leaders. Here are 4 reasons school board members may wish to speak up as individuals:
Thanks for reading and please spread the word. |
Authors
Kai Guthrie is a ninth grade student at Credo High in Rohnert Park, a Citizens' Climate Lobby volunteer, and one of the founders of Schools for Climate Action campaign. Archives
December 2019
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