This meeting was a working meeting to organize the different “green” teams to move forward with the five elements of the initiative.

Tony Tolbert, Ed Smith Principal, began the meeting by discussing the initiative and some ideas that have already been implemented in the school. This was followed by brief reports from a member of each team.

Green Team Reports:
Composting – Kris Venne is excited to report that five classrooms have agreed to compost in their rooms. This will begin the process of composting in the school which will hopefully then be implemented in the cafeteria. The compost gathered will then be used on a garden plot designated for the Ed Smith School in the Morning Side Community gardens. The compost team will meet again October 26th to place the bins in the five participating rooms and discuss further actions.

Recycling – Brian McGann, Ed Smith Head Custodian, reports that during the first month of school the amount of recycled material has increased significantly. Last year 8 tons of material were recycled and already this year 1 ton has been recycled. The amount of recycled material is being weighed and measured by the student council. Brian noted that more could be done to really get everyone into recycling. He noted that there are multiple trash cans in classrooms and sometimes the recycling bin is across the room from the trash bin which can prevent people from properly disposing of different materials. One step is to make it easier to recycle and the other step is to educate. Brian would like to have a development session for teachers and staff headed by Mark Naef to educate people on what gets recycled and how to recycle. Mark agreed to do this along with members of OCRA and Tony said he would find an appropriate date to hold the session. Mark also offered to host tours of his recycling facility and OCRA noted that they have composting sites that are open for tours. A suggestion made by OCRA for educating the staff as well as the students was to have at the end of the school year a demonstration where garbage cans from around the school are all dumped out onto a large plastic sheet then picked through to demonstrate what can be recycled and composted. This is a great visual exercise that shows how much material can be kept out of the land fills and garbage dumps.

Educate – Trisha Schwartz reports that the process of education overlaps with most of the other teams and the education team will meet to discuss their role in supporting the initiative in the school.

Evaluate – Linda Kraemer notes that the evaluation process has already started and that there is a large poster outside the main office indicating the amount of recycled material collected so far this year. The team will write up each month the progress made and will soon be measuring compost as well as the paper recycling.

Nationalize – Anna Endreny says her team will find out if the group is following through with the initiative and then try to expand the program beyond the Ed Smith Community, for example at the district level, to encourage the principals of the initiative. In the school she hopes to expand the ways that the initiative is applied, for example already the cafeteria has agreed to use paper bags for all breakfasts instead of the Styrofoam trays which has greatly reduced waste. She reports that all changes and accomplishments made will be publicized in the Howler.

After the team reports, each group formed into small meetings to further discuss their objectives and appoint a leader for the team. After fifteen minutes the large group reassembled to report on the progress of each team.

Composting – Kris reports he will be setting up speakers to visit with the five classrooms participating in the composting program and the team will be meeting again on Oct. 26th in the principal’s office.

Recycling – Mark notes that many elements of recycling have already begun here in the school so now the team will try to expand the recycling infrastructure at the district level to allow for more types of materials to be recycled through the school. The team will keep in touch through e-mails and the members of the ggi group from ESF will be working with the recycling group.

Educate – Trish says her group will e-mail each other to discuss further their agenda and set up meetings. The team will address several points to further educate the community including increase awareness, increase participation, create class activities and have creative integrated programming to educate all members of the community from staff to students to families as well as the public.

Evaluate – Linda reports that a chair for the team has not been chosen but the team will meet again to establish a chair as well as how to further evaluate the elements of the program.

Nationalize – Anna says the group will continue expanding the efforts of the group as well as share info by publicizing the efforts of the group in the OCRA news letter, the Howler, with posters, put information up on the Ed Smith web site as well report to Neil Driscoll to put it in the district data base.

Chelle Naef , the coordinator and head chair of the committee, closed the meeting by thanking everyone for coming and their effort in putting forward the Go Green Initiative. She is very excited about all that has been accomplished so far and is looking forward to everyone’s continued help in supporting this program.

The next meeting for this committee will be held on December 6th, at 3:15 pm in the vocal music room. All interested parties may attend. Team reports should be given to the secretary, Jennifer Cornell, by e-mail or in the PTO mail box by November 28th, so they can be available for review at the meeting. Thank you.