Unified Education Strategy Grants

Emery Unified School District

On this page you will find...

• Grantee Information
• Opportunities and Obstacles
• Diversion Successes
• Lessons Created
• Partnerships
• Program Contacts

Grantee Information

Emery Unified School District (USD) is a small urban public school district in the San Francisco Bay Area that consists of Anna Yates Elementary School and Emery Secondary School. The grant applicant, Yates Elementary, has approximately 450 students. Emery USD was selected to participate as a Unified Education Strategy (UES) grantee because of its strong interest in developing an effective resource management plan for the district and the community.

Using grant funds, students traveled to the city’s watershed area, visited a recycling center, and observed commercial sites in order to help them develop a "green" business plan. The UES team successfully completed year one and planned to continue its efforts. The UES team decided not to apply for year two of the UES grant because the entire Emery USD underwent a school and district reorganization.

During the first year of the UES grant, Yates Elementary chose to implement the following activities:

• Conducting a campus needs assessment to determine the school’s waste stream.
• Recycling aluminum cans and using the money from the recycling effort to purchase reusable trays for the cafeteria and develop a lunchtime recycling program.
• Initiating a student letter writing campaign to district and community leaders and officials describing students’ recommendations for recycling on their school campus.
• The collaborative instructional team, consisting of five educators and the district’s science/mathematics consultant, developed lessons that heightened awareness of issues related to waste management while applying standards-based learning in mathematics, science, and English-language arts. Fifth-grade students were active in the following recycling lessons:
• Creating science journals in which they recorded daily observations and recommendations.
• Learning about resource conservation issues though thematic units that focused on personal waste, measuring classroom waste, packaging, cafeteria audit, and model landfill observation.
• Participating in a field trip to the Marin Headlands to learn about watersheds and the facility’s recycling program.
• Students who attend the Emeryville Recreation Department’s after-school care reinforced their monthly recycling lessons by implementing campus-based projects as well.

Students analyzed waste audit outcomes and planned to use the data collected to develop recommendations for the district and the community. These recommendations were to be presented at Parent Science Night and/or the Emery Unified School Board meeting. For the 2004–05 school year, students were to have participated in a service-learning project in which students would use the results of their findings to develop a lunchtime recycling program.

Opportunities and Obstacles

• During year one of the UES grant the entire Emery USD went though a school and district redesign with a math-science focus to boost achievement and equitable learning. The UES grant fulfilled the district science initiative to have students participate in hands-on science and gardening in concordance with California state standards.
• Formation of a partnership with the Emeryville Recreation Department’s after-school program that has a strong recycling focus.
• Due to the school and district reorganization, most of the participating UES teachers’ grade-level responsibilities and classroom assignments changed from what they were at the start of the UES program and the beginning of the school year. Thus, the UES program was connected to the fifth grade instead of the sixth grade level.

Diversion Successes

There are no diversion specifics for Emery USD since the district participated in the grant program for one year only. As a result of the students’ market research/waste audit completed in 2003-04, the students intended to participate in a service-learning project in the year 2004-05 in which they would utilize the results of their “market research” to develop a lunchtime recycling program.

Lessons Created

Fifth-grade teachers developed curriculum for students to conduct an audit of waste generation at the school. Students completed the lessons that culminated in their collecting data on the waste produced in their school cafeteria. During the spring of 2004, the students analyzed their data and developed recommendations for waste reduction. They decided to monitor the lunch waste to create a system for recovering the redemption values generated by aluminum can recycling. The students planned to use these funds to purchase reusable lunch trays.

The Emery USD team reported that students developed a heightened awareness of waste management issues during the campus needs assessment (CNA) as they applied standards-based learning in mathematics, science, and English/language arts.

Partnerships

• Alameda County Waste Management Authority
• City of Emeryville
• City of Emeryville, Recreation Department

Program Contacts

Unified Education Strategy Home

Last updated: November 01, 2007