Go Green Initiative Meeting Minutes for May 17^th,  2006

Attending:

Opening of meeting:  Chelle makes announcements concerning the committee and filling positions that will be vacant next year including several leadership positions and the secretary  position.  She would like to be able to keep the core of the committee going. Chelle and Mark will be moving on to Levy next year but Chelle will still help coordinate meeting dates.  She has a small flier ready to send out asking for new board members for the committee.  At Carnival there will be an informational table about the GGI program and OCRRA with a sign-up sheet for people interested in joining the committee as well.  Chelle will ask Kiki, the PTO president, for a few minutes at the beginning of the June general PTO meeting to talk about GGI and encourage people to get involved.  The committee would like to set up a separate evening informational session as well. 

Report by Mark Naef: 

*As of today there are now 20 GGI schools here in New York,  with 12 of them here in the Syracuse School District.  It takes about 2 to 3 meetings with the individual school to convince them to adopt the program but most are receptive. 

*Earth Day here at Ed Smith School was a wonderful promotional feature for the program and there was a lot of exciting things going on that week culminating in the Friday April 21 activities.  That day the classes could choose to see the Veggie Bus, take some time to clean up trash around the building, and several classes took field trips to Naef Recycling or Solvay Paper.  All the 6^th grade classes went to one or the other facility the following week and the 2^nd and 3^rd grades went to both facilities. 

*November 16^th and 17^th , 2006,  the State Wide Recycling Conference will be held right here in Syracuse with a GGI Theme and Jill Buck as a guest speaker.  This is a great opportunity for the City and the students of schools involved in the GGI program.  Mark is working toward creating a separate session for free to students and schools here in the district that have adopted the GGI program for them to come and talk to Jill Buck.  

*Mark announces the possibility for grant money to do things related to the program that require money and to really get things moving.  The grant is through NYSARRR, New York State Association for Reduction, Reuse and Recycling Inc.,  for developing, implementing, and measuring results of the GGI program.  The money will be granted for specific durable supplies, not one time promotional items.  Jennifer Cornell will help write up the grant which needs to be submitted before July 15^th.  We are asking committee chairs to come up with ideas for items that they could use along with a price quote to submit to Jenny by June 14^th, the next GGI committee meeting.  Currently for the grant ideas include asking for the supplies for the permanent compost bin out by the garden plot, a GGI bulletin board for posting information related to the program,  perhaps a flag or banner for the school to indicate it is a GGI school,  and money to use our recycled paper here at Ed Smith to make into stationary or note cards to sell as a fund raiser.  We would like to here from each committee an idea or two for using this money.  Please have it ready for the June 14^th meeting.  For more information about the grant go to www.gogreeninitiative.org.

Doug from OCRRA  presents a poster announcing in three languages how and where to get rid of hazardous waste products and has several for Ed Smith School to put up around the facility.

There were no committee reports presented at this time.

 Respectfully submitted by Jennifer Cornell, GGI Secretary.