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Everywhere you look, there are sure signs of fall: big yellow buses, hi-vis crossing guards and flocks of colorful superhero backpacks.
September is back-to-school time in many parts of the country, and staff are welcoming students into buildings that have been prepared for a new year.
But while teachers can create materials and lesson plans to support student success inside the classroom, they can’t control conditions outside schools that also influence learning outcomes.
Studies show air quality, temperature, and even the presence of trees can affect how well students focus and learn.
Now, with support from the Delaware Watershed Conservation Fund, four elementary schools in Philadelphia — one in South Philadelphia and three in Southwest — will transform their grounds into vibrant green spaces that benefit students, teachers and their communities.
Reimagining the learning environment
In partnership with the School District of Philadelphia, The Nature Conservancy received a $1 million grant to replace asphalt and concrete schoolyards with shade trees, outdoor classrooms, pollinator gardens and green stormwater infrastructure, like rain gardens.
The project is one of six this year supported by funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law Bipartisan Infrastructure Law
The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) is a once-in-a-generation investment in the nation’s infrastructure and economic competitiveness. We were directly appropriated $455 million over five years in BIL funds for programs related to the President’s America the Beautiful initiative.
Learn more about Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that was directed to the Delaware Watershed Conservation Fund for community-driven, green infrastructure projects.
The Nature Conservancy worked closely with the school district and the design team, led by SALT Design Studio and Rodriguez Consulting, to ensure the project met the specific needs of each school by engaging students in the process.
“Each school is different in terms of what will work from an engineering perspective and what staff and students indicated was important,” said Lyndon DeSalvo, urban conservation program manager with The Nature Conservancy. “The conceptual designs for each of these schoolyards take these factors into account.”
Some of the schools will have water features; most will have school gardens; all will have significantly less pavement and more trees — more than 250 will be planted in the course of the project, amounting to at least 60 at each school.
“Our goal is to create holistic schoolyards that will use these natural elements as educational features for students while providing additional benefits for people and nature,” DeSalvo said.
Natural infrastructure like trees, rain gardens and bioswales will also benefit the surrounding communities by managing 4.7 million gallons of stormwater annually that would otherwise run off directly into sewers and local waterways.
Filtering stormwater through natural features such as plants, soil and stone, improves water quality and aquatic habitats and can reduce the risk of flooding — a growing need given the increasingly frequent intense rainstorms brought on by climate change climate change
Climate change includes both global warming driven by human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases and the resulting large-scale shifts in weather patterns. Though there have been previous periods of climatic change, since the mid-20th century humans have had an unprecedented impact on Earth's climate system and caused change on a global scale.
Learn more about climate change .
Philadelphia has a combined sewer system that is prone to overflows following precipitation events, like rainfall or snowmelt. When sewers reach their capacity, the mix of wastewater and stormwater is discharged into nearby waterways, leading to contamination in rivers and creeks, erosion of the landscape, unsafe health and recreation conditions for people, and habitat degradation for native plant and animal species.
In addition to stormwater management, greening school grounds also makes these outdoor spaces significantly cooler. Two weeks ago, there was a heatwave in Philadelphia, with temperatures in the 90s and high humidity. Just days into the new school year, nearly 60 schools without adequate air conditioning, including three supported by this new grant, had to dismiss students early.
More than a drop in the bucket
These aren't the first green schoolyards in Philadelphia, and they won’t be the last — the project is part of a broader initiative in the city, the Resilient Communities Stormwater Initiative.
DeSalvo explained The Nature Conservancy has been working with several partners in Philadelphia over the last few years to determine where green stormwater infrastructure projects can have the greatest impact on water quality by reducing combined sewer overflows, while also providing the most community benefits.
The four schools supported by the grant funding were selected using a prioritization process that took into account factors related to equity and environmental justice, stormwater management potential, community support and the condition of the existing facilities.
“The School District of Philadelphia is striving to make greener, cleaner, and healthier schoolyards to welcome all students to school,” said Emma Melvin, green infrastructure program manager, School District of Philadelphia. “These green schoolyards will provide a place of respite, to play and learn, while teaching students about environmental stewardship.”
In addition to working with students, staff and community members to develop conceptual designs, The Nature Conservancy and partners in the Resilient Communities Stormwater Initiative have done broader engagement in the surrounding neighborhoods, and in Kingsessing, they worked with community partners to develop a neighborhood “Green Vision” plan.
“The schools we selected reflect the community’s vision for where investment is needed — where there is priority and opportunity,” DeSalvo said.
Changing the narrative about the urban landscape
The Nature Conservancy’s work on the ground in Philadelphia speaks to a larger shift in the field of conservation.
“We don’t often think about urban landscapes as contributing to conservation outcomes, but they play a vital role in the health of ecosystems,” said Julie Ulrich, director of urban conservation for The Nature Conservancy.
“For a long time, there was the misguided belief that you had to either focus on environmental impact or social impact — it was always an ‘either/or’ prospect. But we know that these impacts are closely tied together. Both are important drivers of thoughtful, impactful conservation work.”
