Healthy School Environments
Healthy School Environments
More than 53 million children and about 6 million adults spend a significant portion of their days in more than 120,000 public and private school buildings. Many of these buildings are old and in poor condition, and may contain environmental conditions that inhibit learning and pose increased risks to the health of children and staff. The healthy school environments web site is designed to provide one-stop access to the many programs and resources available to help prevent and resolve environmental issues in schools.
Recent Additions
Webinars
| Aug. 1, 2012, 2-3 p.m.: Improving Air Quality with Transportation Changes |
| Aug. 16, 2012, 2-3 p.m.: Career Pathways: Green and Sustainability Knowledge and Skills Statements |
| Sept. 5, 2012, 2-3 p.m.: School Siting and Community Planning |
| Sept. 12, 2012, 2-3 p.m.: Asthma Management in Schools |
| Sept. 19, 2012, 2-3 p.m.: The School Flag Program |
| Sept. 26, 2012, 2-3 p.m.: The Sun, UV and You: EPA's SunWise Program |
| Oct. 3, 2012, 2-3 p.m.: Environmental Education for Everyone: EPA's 'K through Grey' Resources |
| Please visit the webinars page for more! |
EPA Schools Programs
There are many steps that parents, schools and communities can take to help promote healthy school environments. EPA has resources in a number of programs that are designed to help schools and communities take action to protect children's health in one of the most important places—where children learn.
To learn more about EPA Schools Programs, see the List of EPA Schools Programs.
Voluntary Guidelines for Selecting Safe School Locations
On October 3, 2011, EPA released the final School Siting Guidelines. These guidelines can be used to help communities protect the health of students and staff from environmental threats when selecting new locations for schools. The new voluntary guidelines will help local communities consider environmental health issues in establishing school site selection criteria and in conducting effective environmental reviews of prospective school sites. The guidelines recommend involving the public throughout the site selection process to help ensure community support for these decisions.
EPA developed the guidelines in consultation with other Federal agencies, states, school districts, community organizations, health care professionals, teachers, as well as environmental justice, children’s health and environmental groups, among others.
Healthy School Environments Assessment Tool
HealthySEAT is a free, completely customizable software tool to help school districts establish and manage comprehensive school facility self-assessment programs. Learn more about HealthySEAT Version 2...
Healthy School Environments Web Resources (Schools Web Portal)
Searchable database of on-line resources to help facility managers, school administrators, architects, design engineers, school nurses, parents, teachers and staff address environmental health issues in schools. Visitors can browse resources by topic or by geographic area, or search all resources by entering specific keywords into the search box at the top of each page. Find web resources.