D.C. Visitors Find Common Ground With Common Ground

A green high school is getting even greener.

The high school, Common Ground High School – one of three federally recognized ​“Green Ribbon” schools in Connecticut – outlined its plans to build the first LEED platinum certified school building in New Haven during a tour with visitors from the U.S. Department of Education and the Environmental Protection Agency.

The federal officials visited three Connecticut sites – Common Ground and Barnard Environmental Studies Magnet School in New Haven, and Hartford’s Mary Hooker School – Monday afternoon as part of a national tour of federal Green Ribbon schools. The green ribbon acknowledges schools that excel in environmental education while promoting health among their students. In its second year, the program recognized these three Connecticut schools as well as 61 others across the country.

Monday’s tour brought together a diverse set of educators and government officials to visit Common Ground and observe the not-for-profit, environmentally-themed charter school’s efforts.

“This is awesome,” one Department of Education official said as he waited for the tour to start, taking in the bustle of kids running and playing, parents coming to pick them up from the school’s summer camp. ​“This is so cool. I love this level of activity.”

The tour of Common Ground’s 20-acre campus started outside the current school building, with views of adjacent West Rock Park. Visitors stopped to take pictures with the school’s goats – ​“We don’t have these in D.C.!” – before heading inside. In a cafeteria decorated with brightly colored streamers, the visitors snacked on fresh produce grown in Common Ground’s garden. As he brought out the platter of tomatoes, cucumbers, and other vegetables, the schools’ director of development, Joel Tolman, explained how Common Ground provides healthy lunches from its farm. Some 60 percent of the schools’ students qualify for free or reduced lunch, Tolman said.

Moving outside to a wood pavilion – with heads of garlic hanging from the rafters – the new school building’s architects described the plans for the building. The structure will add offices, three classrooms, and a community space for activities from basketball to theater.

Whether shooting hoops or reciting Shakespeare, students will be surrounded by an environmentally friendly learning environment. The building will use natural light, collect and recycle rainwater, generate electricity through solar panels, and use on-site geothermal energy to reduce the use of fossil fuels. By using a timber frame, the carbon sequestered in the building’s structure will compensate for 11 years of the building’s emissions.

Construction will begin this fall in the hopes of completing the structure by September 2014, Tolman said. Common Ground will grow by 10 students this year; the new building will allow the school to expand even further from 175 students to 225.

In this new space, students will continue to be exposed to Common Ground’s unique course offerings, many of which bridge disciplines. Ecologia brings together first-year Spanish and biology, as students speak Spanish while interacting with the community and working the school’s farm, then put on a dinner with their harvest at the semester’s end. Food in the Environment fuses social science with science. Students visit the agricultural company Monsanto as well as organic farms, collect soil samples, and discuss how to fix the U.S.‘s impending food crisis.

Many courses bring students out of the classroom and into the school’s outdoor campus. Cataloging the site’s trees helps students learn about forestry. Examining the school’s plants leads to discussions about invasive versus indigenous species.

These diverse and innovative classes ​“caught our eye,” said Andrea Suarez Falken, director of the U.S. Department of Education’s Green Ribbon Schools program. ​“Common Ground was one of the nominations that most impressed us. It sticks with you. I can’t forget it.”

“It’s even better in real life,” she added.

Many schools have eliminated programs in environmental and physical education, foreign language, and extracurriculars in their effort to meet state and federal academic standards, said Donald Yu, special adviser to the Education Secretary Arne Duncan. Common Ground shows that choosing between this enriching coursework and meeting academic standards is ​“a false choice,” he said. ​“There are creative ways of having your cake and eating it too.”

The trick to keeping environmental education is to consider it essential rather than an ​“add-on,” Common Ground history and social science teacher Jeremy Stone said. ​“Sustainability is the framework into which the other standards fit.”

State education chief Stefan Pryor has followed Common Ground since it broke ground in 1997. At first, it seemed ​“fanciful” that there might be a functioning farm in the middle of New Haven, he said. ​“It’s so rare in public education that this kind of education blossoms,” he said. Not only does the school give students practical knowledge that they later channel into internships and careers, Pryor said, but its hands-on methods engage students in a way that ensures they keep a love of learning. ​“It opens up a new world to them.”