Sustainability

List of 5 items.

• Teaching Sustainability

  Green Thumb Project
  In 2016-17, our Pre-K classes worked on a Project Green Thumb, a year-long Project-Based Learning initiative. Each class worked to create a small urban garden that would beautify plant boxes around the Lycée. They used their own observations as well as knowledge of natural sciences, plants and art.
  

  
  Environment Project Around Climate Change
  In fourth grade, students work with their teachers to study the earth's natural resources and elements, and how they work together to maintain a balance in our ecosystem. In particular, the entire grade observed how human actions have influenced climate change and thought of simple ways to their change daily habits to make a positive impact on the planet.
  
  

  Social Entrepreneurship Program
  Our ninth graders participated in a semester-long social entrepreneurship program, developed in partnership with Ashoka and Start-Up Lycée, led by a team of Lycée teachers. For a final project, students collaborated together to create a concept for a socially oriented nonprofit or business to addresses real world problems. . Under the guidance of entrepreneurs and business leaders for Start-Up Weekend the worked to create a business plan and pitch for potential funders. In the final steps of the competition, one of our groups traveled to San Francisco to present their project: Rent-a-Roof – A Green Experience, a way to link important social issues and waste management.
  
  

  Environmental Spring Fair Booth
  Our fourth graders and parents worked together to design reusable bags to sell during our 2017 “Around the World” Spring Fair. At the booth, they also took the opportunity to educate people about the catastrophic consequences plastic has on our ecosystem through student designed brochures, “I love earth” stickers and short quizzes to take. Reusable metal water bottles and 100% cotton zip lock bags were also distributed.

• Providing a Healthy Learning Environment

  The design of our school buildings is driven by the priority to create healthy indoor learning environments, with clearly defined areas of circulation, abundant access to daylight, and views to the outside from all classrooms and central lobbies.

  
  Generously proportioned and centrally located stairways encourage daily physical activity by all students and faculty and strengthen social cohesion within the school community.

  
  Interior materials have been selected for their natural qualities and are maintained according to green-housekeeping principles and practices.

  
  An interior green wall in our cafeteria, exterior green roof and landscaped terraces provide connections to ecosystems and micro-climates both inside and outside of the school, throughout the year.

• Conserving Resources

  The Lycée works with NOVEDA Technologies, an energy savings company, to help us better monitor our energy usage. Through the use of digital energy dashboards, our facilities teams (and students!) are able to analyze past and current energy usage to determine any recurring trends and create innovative strategies to reduce energy use.

  
  The Lycée purchases Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) from Sterling Planet. Our REC purchase has both local and global environmental benefits, helping use emit almost no regional air pollution or ozone-forming CO2s. PDF Certificate

  
  To reduce water waste, we utilize low-flow bathroom plumbing fixtures and have installed a water meter to the HVAC (heating, ventilating, and air conditioning) cooling towers for improved optimization and real-time display of actual use.

  
  The building is designed to bring in abundant natural sunlight, which helps us reduce dependency on electrical lights as well as keeps the building warm during cold winter season.. Heating and electrical lighting typically represent the largest proportion of energy demand for schools, and the use of “free” heating and lighting from the sun helps reduce the generation of greenhouse gas from fossil-fuel based energy production.

  
  As of 2016, we use LED lighting (light-emitting diode) in offices and classrooms with advanced motion activation. To keep increasing our electrical efficiency, our maintenance team installed local controllers in common areas that schedule the lighting according to our occupancy.

  
  We installed a wind turbine on the York Wing rooftop, a gift of the Class of 2013, producing 1.5kW.

  
  We now have a solar array on the 6th-floor Primary rooftop! On any given sunny day, it creates about 3.5kW of renewable energy. Fun Fact: Both the solar and wind installations can generate a max 5KW, enough energy to power 2-3 classrooms.

• City Trees

  Take a look at our 2nd floor terrace where we planted two trees for the “Million Trees Giveaway” project! Million Trees NYC is an innovative, public-private initiative with an important and ambitious goal: to plant and care for one million new trees across the city’s five boroughs.

• Green School Alliance Affiliation

  As a founding member of the Green Schools Alliance and its “Renewable Energy Consortium for Schools”, we collaborate with other schools from our district to face any environmental challenges and to commit to our eco-friendly goals.