Public Schools Account for a Third of NYC’s Building Pollution. What Would It Take to Go Green?

Public school buildings, many of which are an average of 75 years old, grapple with mold, leaks, antiquated heating and cooling systems and poor ventilation, environmental advocates argued at a rally Wednesday.

“This week, the nation’s largest school district goes back to school,” said Theo Moore, executive director of the environmental non-profit Alliance for a Greater New York (ALIGN). “But 1.1 million children in 1,800 schools across the city are going back to classrooms that are, quite frankly, crumbling.” 

Public school buildings, many of which are an average of 75 years old, are deteriorating facilities that grapple with mold, leaks, asbestos, antiquated heating and cooling systems and poor ventilation, according to a new report launched Wednesday by ALIGN. 

The report says the Big Apple’s public schools have become unhealthy, climate-polluting environments, and urges the city to invest $2.2 billion a year over the next five years to create a cleaner and greener future for its students. 

That includes swapping out old cooling and heating systems for brand new ones, insulating classrooms with new windows, re-doing roofs so they can accommodate solar panels, and revamping ventilation systems.

Buildings are responsible for nearly 70 percent of all the climate change-inducing greenhouse gasses emitted in New York City and public school buildings generate one third of that pollution, according to the report. 

Plus 9.5 percent of the city’s school buildings are located in a 100-year floodplain, or areas that face a 1 percent annual risk of flooding due to coastal storms. As climate change accelerates and flash floods and coastal storms become more severe, that number will increase to almost 12 percent by 2050.

But public schools aren’t just a part of the climate crisis: old school buildings can also make for unhealthy environments, ALIGN’s report notes.

“I attend Beacon High School in Hell’s Kitchen, where our HVAC system takes in toxic fumes from the taxi stand next door,” said Ava Baranowski, Beacon High School student featured in the report. 

“It’s difficult to see my classmates and teachers struggle with headaches, asthma, and nausea because of elevated pollution levels from the idling cars,” she added. 

Communities of color tend to disproportionately bear the brunt of these conditions.

Nearly 70 percent of the schools with the worst ventilation are located in communities of color in Brooklyn and Queens, the report says. These areas “also have some of the highest rates of child asthma, extreme heat exposure, and are close to polluting infrastructure like power plants and highways.”

While repairing this damage with ALIGN’s suggested budget will come out to $11.1 billion through 2030, the report says it will pay off in the long run as it will generate over 64,000 green jobs a year and save the city money on energy bills.

By making green upgrades, the $275 million the administration is currently spending on energy annually “would become $137 million,” Moore said. 

“Our schools are suffocating our children. They are unsafe environments. These energy efficiency upgrades are a solution to not only keeping schools healthy, but creating jobs and saving money in the long run. This is a win, win, win for everyone,” he added.

Last year, the 368 energy efficiency upgrade projects that the city took on in public schools across the boroughs already generated $8 million in cost savings, according to an annual progress report by the city’s Department of Education.

The current administration has been making plans to help schools across New York City go green. In 2022, Mayor Eric Adams committed to investing $4 billion to convert 100 public schools to all-electric heating by 2030. 

So far, $1 billion has been allocated for school electrification efforts and only 14 schools have received funding to go fully electric, according to the Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS).

But DCAS remains hopeful, saying in an email that they have “ramped up” efforts to reduce the city’s carbon footprint “to benefit more than 1 million NYC school children.”

The city’s current Capital Plan, a long-term strategy for infrastructure investments that spans from 2025 to 2029, set aside an extra $1.4 billion for the School Construction Authority (SCA) to electrify 33 school buildings, according to a SCA spokesperson. Plus $350 million will be allocated to upgrade heating systems, and the plan is to triple the amount of electrification projects that were approved during the last capital plan.*

And more granular green progress is being made to school buildings, including 256 upgrades to LED lighting systems, 225 upgrades to enhance mechanical systems and 123 solar project installations, according to the Department of Education.

The administration is “doubling down on our commitment to increasingly sustainable schools” Jenna Lyle, a spokesperson for the Department of Education, said in an email.

“Our solar roofs on schools across the city make up more than 80 percent of the city’s total progress to date towards clean energy goals, hundreds of mechanical updates have been carried out to improve energy efficiency, and we’ve rolled out curbside composting programs at every school, just to name a few of the ways in which we’re prioritizing this work,” Lyle elaborated.

ALIGN, however, says more is needed and that investing significantly in green upgrades will not only curb climate pollution, but build healthier schools.

“It sounds like it’s a large investment, but it is a very small portion of our city’s budget that we’re asking for to make sure we’re prioritizing the schools that need it the most,” said Jenille Scott, climate director for ALIGN.

“This is like a call to action and a way for us to make sure that we are creating healthy, learning working environments for our students and our teachers and our workers,” she added.

*This story was updated to include comment from the School Construction Authority.

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