reduce traffic congestion and promote sustainable transportation.  This carpool matching service will enable parents to register in a secure online database and find other parents with whom they can share the task of transporting their children to school.  The system can help parents arrange carpools, bicycle trains, or walking school buses, and best of all, it's free! 

Parents register in the system by entering their contact information and choosing the school that their child attends.  Parents can register more than one child, even if they go to different schools, and names remain anonymous. At the end of the registration, parents get a matchlist of other parents that are interested in sharing rides and have similar routes.

Parents simply call or email the other parents on their matchlist.

If you are interested in getting started, visit the 511 SchoolPool website and see if your principal has signed up your school. If not, don't worry! All schools will be in the system in the coming month.

Reclaiming a piece of neglected play yard and transforming it into an ecologically rich school garden is a dream of many parents, teachers, and students. Green schoolyards cultivate an awareness of our finite resources, reinforce values of environmental stewardship, help students understand concepts of nutrition and health, and connect children to the natural world. But creating them takes a lot of work, persistence, and know-how.

In their book, How to Grow a School Garden, authors Arden Bucklin-Sporer and Rachel Pringle provides all the tools your school community will need to build a productive and engaging school garden that will continue to inspire and nurture students and families for years to come. It's all here: developing the concept, planning, fund-raising, organizing, designing the space, preparing the site, working with parents and schools, teaching in the garden, planting, harvesting, and even cooking, with kid-friendly recipes and year-round activities. Packed with strategies, to-do lists, sample letters, detailed lesson plans, and tricks of the trade from decades of experience developing school garden programs for grades K-8, this hands-on approach will make school garden projects accessible, inexpensive, and sustainable. 

And in case you have more time on your hands, you can also check out Sharon Danks's new book, Asphalt to Ecosystems: Design Ideas for Schoolyard Transformation. Sharon's firm has worked with many SFUSD school communities as they have developed master plans for their own green schoolyards.

  SFUSD has rolled out a Shared Savings Plan     to encourage and reward schools that   

  successfully reduce the utility bill at their site.   

  In return for their efforts to minimize energy   

  and water use, schools and admin buildings  

  will receive half of the savings they generate.    

  These can be used to pay for supplies, school   programs, or additional efficiency projects.

Each site has received a baseline utility budget based on average usage during the prior year. Every month, principals or building representatives receive a utility report that compares a site's current usage to its baseline. The District also provides a list of utility-saving ideas and responds to any requests for additional training or support. All sites that save more than 5% on any one of the utility costs will get to keep half of the savings they generate, minus any increase in other utilities. In addition, the best performing ES, MS, and HS will get an extra bonus. 

Last year, SFUSD tested the premise of incentivizing behavioral change at Monroe and John Muir elementary schools. Using behavioral techniques alone, Muir and Monroe were able to reduce their March gas usage by 23% and 17%, respectively, compared to March 2009. If the Shared Savings Plan had been in place at the time, Muir would have received $511 for the month and Monroe $274. Over the course of the entire winter, savings would have been in the thousands of dollars. 

Twenty one trees were planted outside Bayview schools, part of director James Cameron's Avatar Home Tree Initiative.  READ MORE 

EXAMINER OBSESSED WITH RAINWATER

Seven SF schools will get new rainwater cisterns-to use while 15 schools already capture up to 5,000 gallons each.  READ MORE, MORE , and MORE 

MISSION GRADUATE HONORED

Former Mission High student De'Anthony Jones wins prestigious Brower Youth Award.  READ MORE 

WALK TO SCHOOL DAY

Fifteen school are now part of SF's Safe Routes to School program and efforts are increasing to organize walking school buses.  READ MORE

STUDENTS PROMOTE COMPOSTING THROUGH ART

Andy Xie, a 2nd grader at ER Taylor Elementary School, won the SF Environment Compost Poster contest. READ MORE  

CHEF COOKS WITH INGREDIENTS FROM SCHOOL GARDEN