FUSD’s CLEAN wins The Golden Bell Award

The Golden Bell Award, which promotes educational excellence, recognized Fremont’s steps to promote climate literacy

Staff Writer

FUSD was presented the Golden Bell Award for its excellent work as a leader in the movement for climate literacy on December 5th. In particular, the award recognized FUSD’s Climate Literacy and Environmental Action Network (CLEAN), a group of students, teachers, and partners who are credited with promoting the execution of three student-led resolutions which aim to combat climate change and lead the district to a greener future.

According to the 2024 Board Environmental Update, the resolutions pledged improvements to transportation, landscaping, plastic use, and waste among other promises.

Instructional Coach Nate Ivy, who helps teachers improve student experiences at the district level, helped organize the network. “These resolutions highlighted a desire for the district to do a better job as a district on environmental issues, and CLEAN is a group of people and partners, teachers, students, and organizations who work to achieve the goals in these three resolutions,” he said.

To promote landscaping efforts, eight schools in FUSD can receive trees and initial maintenance for free, under an urban forestry grant. Grounds Supervisor Jeremy Schneider, who was involved with planting trees at Warwick Elementary and Durham Elementary, said, “It’s important that we create a better environment for our children to go to school. We need to increase our shade cover with the trees. If we don’t start looking ahead, it’s just going to make it harder for us in the long run.”

FUSD’s new electric buses charge at their stations. “Half of the students who ride the bus in our district ride on an electric bus,” said Ivy. “Our electric buses travel about 45,000 all-electric miles per year” (Photo Credit: Ernest Epley).

The effort is also a way for students to get involved in their own education. “We are doing a new project this year called ‘How Cool is Your Schoolyard?’ where students go out with infrared thermometers and they measure and compare the surface temperature of different places on campus, and then they make recommendations about where they think there needs to be more shade,” said Ivy.

Improvements have also been made in the transportation sector, with a new fleet of fourteen fully-electric school buses. “We’re taking these old vehicles that are gross polluters, that use diesel fuel and gasoline fuel that we’re taking them off the road,” said Ernest Epley, the director of the Transportation Department. “We are replacing them with zero-emission school buses, whether that is electric school buses or electric vehicles. So there’s a real practical effect right away.”

The board update also emphasized the developments which CLEAN has spearheaded in terms of child nutrition. “We have worked with the different cooks in the district to be more representative of the different food cultures,” said Ivy, citing the Indian and Chinese food options which have recently been added to the menu.

“Ten of our elementary schools have even moved away from having disposable trays and plastic forks and sauce packets; they’re using all metal reusables that get washed. It’s going to save about two million pieces of plastic from going into the landfill every year,” Ivy said.

“There’s lots of really good things going on,” Ivy summarized. “I don’t think a lot of people kind of immediately jumped to mind on Fremont’s environmental leadership, but there have been lots of environmental programs that American High has also helped pilot, both in the city and in the county.”

FUSD sent representatives to collect the Golden Bell Award. “This is the first Golden Bell that Fremont Unified School District has ever received, and it’s pretty cool that it’s in this topic of climate change innovation,” said Instructional Coach Nate Ivy.