California Gov. Gavin Newsom today announced a state budget that clearly aims to make hard choices as the state faces its first deficit in years. But the governor’s proposal leaves out two wise investments.

We’ve joined with a statewide coalition to write a letter asking Gov. Newsom to ensure that school infrastructure investments are cost-effective and aligned with California’s climate and equity goals, and to coordinate state, county, and local actions to safeguard children’s health and learning.

We applaud the work that went into the adoption of this year’s budget, but we must move quickly to ensure we are preparing our school buildings, grounds, and students to be climate-ready.

In “Clean and Healthy Schools are Electric: Aligning California’s School Infrastructure Investments with our Climate and Health Goals,” our new report with Rewiring America and UC Santa Barbara, we make the case for upgrading to all-electric HVAC systems with advanced filtration. This transition can deliver enormous educational and health benefits to California’s students and school staff, all while cutting operating costs.

In our guest post on NextGen Policy’s Climate 100 blog, we urged California’s lawmakers to align every dollar spent in K-12 infrastructure with building an equitable zero carbon future and ensure that our current actions work towards, and not against, the state’s 2045 goal.

We’re urging Governor Newsom and leaders in California to invest in a renewed and far-sighted vision for how we will ensure every school campus performs its most critical function: providing a safe, healthy, and inspirational space for children to learn without disruption.

Thanks to all the young people who joined us at the Ed100 Leadership Academy. We're excited to work together!

We submitted a comment on California’s new Scoping Plan for economy-wide decarbonization alongside the California Federation of Teachers, Ten Strands, and Rewiring America. As one of California’s largest sectors of public infrastructure, our statewide climate goals cannot be met without including K-12 schools as part of the solution.

CA SCR 53 is a resolution that would make California only the second state to declare a climate emergency. This resolution was written by youth climate leaders and continues the movement to support youth voices in climate policy. We are proud to offer our support.

After the May revision of the 2022-23 budget and the news of a nearly $100B surplus, we wrote to California’s budget leaders again to encourage them to invest in climate-resilient schools and develop a statewide master plan for climate action in public schools.

We wrote to California’s budget leaders to urge them to take action in this year’s budget to improve the climate resilience of our school facilities and grounds.

EdSource published “How state leaders can advance climate-resilient schools now”, a commentary UndauntedK12 co-authored with Lisa Patel, a clinical assistant professor at Stanford University and co-director of the Stanford Climate, Health, and Equity Task Force.