W.H. schools boost their green initiative

For West Hempstead school district officials, it’s not nature versus nurture, it’s nature plus nurture.

Starting in mid-September, the administration will launch its Green Team initiative to help students and staff become more environmentally aware. To this end, the Green Team will use three primary goals: teaching sustainability, nurturing “our innate connection with nature” and modeling the sustainable behaviors society has come to embrace.

The idea came to school administrators during a meeting of the district’s Strategic Planning Council where West Hempstead High School teacher Joseph Bonasia, a member of the Council, made a presentation about environmental education. Many of Bonasia’s recommendations were things the district had already implemented.

“It struck as that we haven’t done a very good job of letting our employees, our students and community know of the good things that we’re already doing in terms of limiting our energy use, managing our resources,” Deputy Superintendent Richard Cunningham said. 

As a result, the idea to introduce a Green Team was born.

According to Cunningham, Bonasia had also provided the Council and administrators with some insight into the interests of community residents as they pertain to environmental awareness. That got district officials to consider creating an interactive initiative to get public input and help boost the school’s green program. 

“We thought we could put some effort into tapping into the interest and the energy of the community to really improve what we do in West Hempstead schools,” Cunningham said, “but also help our students become more environmentally aware and have them bring that home and really make that part of their education.”