EPA Releases New Voluntary School Siting Guidelines

New help has just arrived for school districts’ site planning needs. On October 3, 2011, The U. S. Environmental Protection Agency released new voluntary school siting guidelines. These new guidelines will help schools / local educational agencies (LEA), to decide whether to renovate an existing school or build a new school on the current site or on a new site. This document is a good roadmap for LEA’s, architects, and others who are involve in school siting decisions.

The guidelines look at the decision of school siting from a public health standpoint. The aspect of the need for the community’s involvement in working through this process, and how the outcome will be better when the public is apprised of the issues and decisions throughout the process, is also addressed. (If you’ve ever tried to make changes in your school district/school, you know the importance of fully involving the public at all junctures in order to obtain public support.)

EPA used input from school districts, teachers, health care and environmental professionals, other Federal agencies, states, children’s health and environmental organizations, and others, in putting together the guidelines.

The EPA was tasked with producing this information after Congress initiated the Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) in December of 2007, with the criteria of taking into account the potential for pollution at a given site, transportation modes available, energy savings, and the possibility of using a school as an emergency shelter.

The guidelines use a step-by-step process, starting with questions to answer, then lists the steps to take to do an environmental review, steps for the gathering of data, and the making of a decision.

The 152-page document doesn’t address existing schools, but does encourage existing schools to use EPA’s Healthy SEAT (Healthy Schools Environmental Assessment Tool) to provide a healthy existing school.

Here are the links for both the new School Siting Guidelines and for Healthy SEAT.

http://www.epa.gov/schools/siting/download.html
http://www.epa.gov/schools/healthyseat/