Section E: Support Services
Policy Title: Climate Action & Sustainability
Policy Code: ECF
Lead Department: Operations
Print Version (in PDF)
PURPOSE
Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) is a major consumer of energy, building material, water, food, and other products that contribute to the climate crisis. To help ensure that its students, staff, and community have a safe, healthy environment with resources to live, TUSD will strive to pursue bold and swift climate action.
TUSD will strive to take direct action to address sustainability and resiliency to include carbon footprint, water use, and negative environmental impact through a comprehensive process, while evaluating cost-effectiveness and financial sustainability.
TUSD will strive to cut emissions in half by 2030 and reach net-zero emissions by 2040.
I. CLIMATE MITIGATION
I.A GREENHOUSE GAS (GHG) BASELINE REPORT
1. Within 12 months of this climate action resolutions passage, the District shall strive to conducting a comprehensive greenhouse gas inventory from all sources owned by the district for the most recent fiscal year.
2. The inventory should consider following best practices and guidance from respected protocols, such as the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Corporate Standard/Local Government Operations Protocol and consider aligning with the most current emissions verification reporting standards (such as ISO 14064).
3. To track progress over time, the district may consider conducting a new comprehensive GHG inventory every 3 years using a consistent methodology.
I.B SCOPE 1 and 2: Direct and Indirect Emissions by TUSD
I.B.1 TRANSPORTATION
1. TUSD shall strive to the reduction of carbon emissions of yellow and white fleet for student transportation and department transportation based on short and long-term fleet lifecycle strategies.
2. TUSD shall continue to enforce EEC Environmental Quality – Vehicle Idling and EEC-R Environmental Quality – Idle Reduction Policy Regulations to the best of their ability, by requiring all TUSD employees who drive TUSD vehicles to review the policies. TUSD shall consider installing signage to inform students/parents.
3. TUSD will strive to converting Yellow Fleet and White Fleet to electric powered vehicles by 2040.
4. TUSD will strive to prioritize electric bus routes to communities of those disproportionately impacted by climate change.
5. Electric vehicle battery recycling will align with the current battery recycling program.
I.B.2 BUILDINGS PORTFOLIO AND PROJECT LEVEL GOALS
The District’s portfolio of buildings shall strive to achieve the following goals:
1. Strive to use best practices for new construction, renovations, and retrofits such as LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), PHIUS (Passive House Institute US) CORE COMM for non-residential buildings, CHPS (Collaborative for High Performance Schools) or other sustainability design goal.
2. Strive to reduce net energy consumption by 25% below the baseline year by 2030, including on-site renewable energy generation as applicable.
3. Strive for a baseline Energy Use Intensity (EUI) criterion against EPA Energy Star Portfolio Manager K-12 Education site EUI of 48 kBtu/square foot/year on renovations and retrofits. Strive to achieve a site EUI of 25 kBtu/square foot/year on new construction.
4. Strive to be all-electric and eliminate on-site fossil gas combustion before 2035.
5. Strive to reduce embodied emissions from construction by 25% below the baseline by 2030, with zero emission construction sites by 2045.
6. Strive to utilize low global warming potential refrigerants and low embodied carbon materials.
7. Strive to integrate infrastructure for electric vehicle (EV) charging for District vehicles.
a. Consider including bidirectional EV chargers that enable future participation in vehicle-to-everything (V2X) applications such as vehicle-to-building (V2B) resilience hubs and vehicle-to-grid (V2G) programs.
I.B.3 ELECTRIFICATION and ENERGY EFFICIENCY
1. Reduce energy use through energy efficiency building practices to allow new and existing buildings to use less energy to accomplish the same functions, leading to fewer greenhouse gas emissions.
2. Strive to attain the whole electrification of all building systems, vehicles, cooking equipment, lawnmowers, leaf blowers, and all other places not explicitly specified by 2040.
3. TUSD will proactively consider replacement of fossil fuel electric equipment and appliances with all electric versions when fiscally viable to do so.
4. Strive to install high efficiency, electric heat pumps, rather than one-way A/C units, for heating and cooling.
I.B.4 ENERGY USAGE
1. Strive to attain 100% clean energy usage by 2035.
a. Explore opportunities for Solar Service Agreements (SSA) and Community Choice Aggregation (CCA).
2. Strive for a net-zero energy (NZE) school district by 2040.
I.C SCOPE 3: Indirect Emissions Outside TUSD’s Direct Control
1. Food
a. Strive to increasing the portion of plant-based and organic produce used by district food services that is fresh, locally sourced, and minimally processed or packaged, and prepared onsite.
b. Provide daily plant-based complete meal options for breakfast and lunch at all high school campuses by 2026, and all campuses by 2028.
2. Waste
a. Strive to reducing solid waste sent to the landfill by increasing recycling at school campuses and other district locations.
b. Strive to reduce food waste through composting opportunities.
c. Explore the implementation of programs to attain zero-waste status, including by using reusable products, by 2040.
d. Strive to the diversion of food waste from landfills through composting and recycling programs to reduce waste production.
3. Procurement
a. Consideration of sustainability and location within procurement operating procedures and purchasing processes to reduce environmental impacts such as the purchase of paper, cleaning supplies, landscaping, pesticides, food service products, facility equipment, and contracts, etc. Procurement will include language in District issued proposals to request sustainable product and service options, which will be evaluated along with non-sustainable product and services offerings.
4. Student and Employee Transport:
a. TUSD shall encourage students and staff to walk and bike to school.
i. TUSD shall strive to organize bi-monthly "Walk and Bike to School Days," providing sufficient bike parking and racks.
5. Utilize Dark Sky Lighting Standards.
II. CLIMATE ADAPTATION, RESILIENCE, AND EDUCATION
II.A HEAT RESILIENCY
1. Strive to establish a district-wide Extreme Heat Preparedness Plan that outlines procedures for modifying school schedules, canceling outdoor activities, and implementing cooling measures during excessive heat events.
a. Strive to ensure that at least 95% of school facilities have designated cooling rooms available during extreme heat events by the end of the 2026-2027 academic year for students and staff.
b. Implement systems to monitor:
i. Indoor and outdoor temperatures across all school campuses.
ii. Heat-related illnesses and incidents, across all school campuses.
ii. Indoor temperatures in transportation modes.
iv. The National Weather Service's heat advisories, warning and forecast tools.
2. All new school construction and major renovation projects shall strive to incorporate appropriate building and environmental features and technologies to address heat resiliency, including but not limited to:
a. Cool roof technologies, shading structures, etc. These features shall be retrofitted in at least 25% of existing buildings by 2030 and 100% by 2035.
b. Appropriate tree canopy, with a goal of maintaining 100% of existing tree canopy cover and ideally increasing the tree canopy overall where existing irrigation lines exist.
II.B GRID OUTAGE
1. TUSD will proactively consider the installation of Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS), connected to the current solar systems, to enhance climate resilience in the event of grid outages.
II.C WATER
1. Within 12 months of the passage of this policy update, the District shall strive to conduct a comprehensive water use inventory and account for water use from sources including but not limited to precipitation, runoff-reduction, leaks, faulty fixtures, and inefficient equipment.
2. Strive to replace all inefficient plumbing fixtures with WaterSense certified, low-flow alternatives; upgrade to water efficient appliances; install smart irrigation controllers and water-efficient irrigation systems; and strive to install rainwater harvesting systems.
3. Regarding landscape water use, the district will follow drought-tolerant design guidelines and plant native, drought-tolerant plants.
a. Strive to reduce water usage from landscaping by 25% by 2035.
b. Strive to utilize xeriscaping and design the plantings, soils, and other features to be self-sustaining with natural precipitation only.
4. Adoption of landscape water efficiency technologies such as xeriscaping for drought-tolerant design and plant consideration, and rainwater harvesting through micro basins, detention, retention, cisterns, etc.
II.D HEALTH
1. Strive to reduce environmental harm from pesticide and herbicide use.
a. Adopt a system of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) as approved by the EPA for businesses.
III. EDUCATION
TUSD will support students in climate action by:
1. Promoting teaching and learning to equip children and youth with the knowledge and skills to build a more sustainable world.
2. Supporting education and outreach to promote energy and water conservation, and waste reduction.
3. Ensuring curriculum throughout grade levels from elementary school to high school to equip students with the knowledge and skills to build a more sustainable world.
a. Strive to develop and/or select educational programs and materials at all grade levels, provide teacher professional development, and ensure equitable, standards aligned instruction across the curriculum that promotes student understanding of the causes and consequences of the climate crisis, opportunities to engage in climate solutions, and pathways to green jobs.
b. Strive to maintain a commitment to our district and community partnerships that support school gardens, sustainability education and food literacy such as TUSD School Garden Network which includes our partnership with UA School Garden Workshop and our Food Literacy program.
c. Strive to ensure all high school campuses have access to sustainability learning, including AP Environmental Sciences by 2027, ensure existing CTE programs are geared towards future sustainability (such as automotive repair and culinary) by 2027, and explore potential new CTE programs focused on sustainability by 2030.
4. Engaging students in sustainability projects throughout TUSD.
a. Strive to start a school garden program in at least 25% of TUSD campuses by 2027.
b. Explore the feasibility and cost estimates of providing outdoor learning experiences at TUSD’s Milagro property for middle and high school students by 2028.
5. Strive to work with Health Services on comprehensive action to acknowledge and alleviate the anxiety epidemic striking the younger generation, especially pertaining to climate grief and anxiety by:
a. Introducing green spaces as healing spaces.
b. Introducing mental health awareness and climate anxiety into health class.
c. Offer mental health education, and
d. Conduct staff development to meet these needs if not currently sufficient.
6. Strive to introduce climate change into the existing curriculum, accomplishing the following by 2027.
- Develop and introduce climate-focused courses.
- Integrating climate across other courses (e.g. climate change data in math classes).
- Collaborate with Pima Community College (PCC) during this process and engage in workforce development training programs alongside PCC.
IV. FUNDING
TUSD shall affirmatively strive to funding climate action measures as a part of the capital budgeting process, every year. As part of its annual report, TUSD will report on grants and other funding opportunities pursued in achieving sustainability goals.
TUSD shall also make a plan to make the most of the Inflation Reduction Act Tax Credits, which at the time of passage, will be available for the next 9 years.
V. EQUITY
TUSD recognizes that climate change affects different communities disproportionately, with marginalized and under-resourced communities often enduring its impacts. TUSD shall strive to integrate equity into the execution of these climate action efforts and prioritize the voices and needs of historically marginalized communities.
This shall be achieved via the various strategies specified elsewhere in this document, as well as by striving to retrofit schools with majority low-income students first or at the same pace as non-low-income schools.
VI. IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGIES
The implementation of this policy is the joint responsibility of the Governing Board, administrators, teachers, students, and support personnel, and its success is based on cooperation at all levels. The site administrators, directors, managers, and supervisors will be accountable for energy management within their area of responsibility.
1. TUSD staff shall strive to creating a comprehensive climate action plan and setting out a roadmap to achieve the goals set out in this plan.
a. This plan shall include community input and public engagement.
b. Use climate projections instead of historic data for weather and precipitation modeling to inform planning, landscape, infrastructure, and community development processes and policy.
2. TUSD shall strive to identify and name a specific staff position to be a “climate champion,” with a modified job description to codify this role. This staff member shall strive to ensure climate action considerations and implementations in all efforts of the district.
3. Enable all TUSD employees, students, board members, local government officials, members of community organizations as well as members of the community to be able to input and influence the implementation of this plan.
4. During the plan’s implementation, carbon credits/offsets should be used as a tool of last resort to achieve emissions reductions. Any carbon credits used should be verifiable and high quality.
5. The TUSD Governing Board shall strive to consider climate in terms of emissions and future climate impacts in all future issues considered by the Board.
6. TUSD shall strive to consider the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases (SC-GHG) as part of all cost-benefit analyses. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report on SC-GHG: Estimates Incorporating Recent Scientific Data Dated 11/2023 shows $208/metric ton of CO2, $1,950/metric ton of CH4, and $59,041/metric ton of N2O for 2024 And data will be used as a baseline for analysis reporting.
VII. REVIEW AND REPORTING
This policy will be reviewed on an on-going basis. Within one year of passage of these policy updates, Administration will strive to create a TUSD Sustainability website to describe progress towards climate action and sustainability and will provide an annual report to the Governing Board and general public on the status of the implementation of this plan.
The Administrative Regulation for this policy shall define implementation details.
Adopted: December 17, 1991
Revision: September 3, 1996
November 12, 2002
June 24, 2004
June 10, 2008
October 29, 2024
Future Cross Ref: 3751 Efficient Paper Utilization
Replaces TUSD Policy # 3750
