Thursday, January 15, 2009

MINUTES for Meeting #2

New construction
Recently did a green construction project at Prospect Sierra
• Want student input (unclear as to when/how this will occur)

o Mary suggested white roofing

Recycling

• Location? for new bins (EnvAc and EmChen have been working on this)
• New bins will be more clearly marked: compost, cans, plastic
• Currently no way to recycle film plastics & meat
• The Waste Management service quota gets filled quickly, Dave Clerici (CFO) looking for a new recycling company



Solar Panels

• Board Member Dave Carniglia said they were “seriously considering”
• Still hearing concerns about leaking and roofing: solar companies have dealt with this, not an issue

o This seems to be more of a smoke screen...
• Recap of the history:
o We were really close to signing off, concerns about someone else owning them
o Steve Holtzman had the idea for parents to form a corporation, would get tax benefits

• Shosh suggested we have sq. feet of solar panels available for sale to parents as a donation (good graduation present)
• Alumni donors would be good, Solar City managed by an alum
• Energy Advisory Group has been formed and is discussing things

We want to make some visible progress, hard if there are no direct links to people with power to make these decisions (no administrators were attending: Jonna, several parents and students).
• What about having a designated “green” administrator or board member whose job it would be to attend these meetings and focus on the environmental issues?

CARBON FOOTPRINT
• Total: 1,294, 000 lbs carbon dioxide (rounded #s)
o 151, 000 lbs from electricity
o 300,000 lbs from gas
o 544, 000 lbs from cars
o 17,000 lbs from buses
o 283, 000 lbs form waste (very rough figure)

• Notice how large a portion car usage is!

Ideas:


- Carpooling
• Send vans to a few locations to pick people up
• Replace vans with at least biodiesel
• Zip code party
• Problems with timing for BART shuttles at the end of the day (people with 7th free or with sports until 6 pm)
• Incentives for carpooling, charging for parking?
• Also problems in the morning, usually there are twice as many people waiting than can fit in the van, need another driver! Fighting for seats!
• Zip cars?
• After school carpooling: we should make a catalogue of people who have to stay late for sports, dance, music, etc. & what time they leave & where they live
• List of students and their zip codes in the packets sent out at the beginning of the year

- Non-car transportation
• Better bike parking needed, we have an unused rack that needs to be bolted down somewhere
• BART/Chia
• sacrifice ~7 mins for BART, can do work/sleep unlike if you are driving
• If everyone who could take BART did, we would remove 770,000 lbs of carbon dioxide (not sure about sources for that number)

• Chia’s idea: everyone for whom the journey to BART is shorter than the journey to school should take BART!
• everyone who lived outside the radius from Rockridge to the next station on either side would take BART = half the school (right now only ~50 students take BART)
• transportation costs would be lower because you can get a student card from Faith Chia (50% discount)
• leniency on the tardy policy to account for delays, etc
• some parents worried about kids taking BART

- Waste
• “Non-waste” lunches?
o Not really viable
• HRS-CPS waste competition
o They would pwn.
o Maybe competition between classes?


Getting the word out
• CPS DAY/Forum
• Periscope, posters
• “Webinar”?


ACTION
• Talk to StuLife about a forum for CPS Day
• Publicize info
o 50% off BART cards for students
o figure out a better late policy

• Make questionnaire about who would be interested in testing out the shuttle idea (alternative to BART)
• Talk about budget to buy incentives (iTunes cards?)