CHAPTER
17. Master Plan for Healthy, Sustainable, and Climate-Resilient Schools
25995.
The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:(a) Climate change is driving increasingly severe negative impacts on early childhood, elementary, and secondary education, particularly from more frequent and extreme heat waves and wildfires that produce toxic smoke and other hazards that harm children’s health, causing both individual pupil absences and schoolwide closures due to unhealthy indoor air quality. In 2020 alone, 104 California school districts were subject to wildfire evacuation orders. Climate change is also increasingly causing electricity insecurity, particularly in rural and low-income areas, which disrupts school operations. In addition to direct health impacts
and disruptions to their schooling, children are also suffering from fear and anxiety related to the impacts of climate change that they can see around them, and these feelings harm their mental health and hinder their readiness to learn.
(b) (1) All pupils must be able to attend school and learn without disruption in safe, healthy, sustainable, and resilient spaces. Modernizing schools with facilities and equipment that reliably and efficiently maintain conditions conducive to children’s health is a fundamental safeguard for pupils’ learning and opportunity.
(2) (A) When wildfire smoke fouls the air, school ventilation and filtration systems should maintain indoor air that is free of hazardous gases and particulates.
(B) When temperatures soar, children should be able to play on tree-sheltered schoolyards with pervious, heat-sinking surfaces and drought-tolerant landscaping.
(C) When extreme weather forces the Independent System Operator and electricity providers to cut electricity, schools should remain in operation for the benefit of pupils, the local economy, and the surrounding community, and be powered by renewable energy that is generated and stored onsite.
(c) Nonetheless, persistent structural inequities in the state’s economy and educational system exacerbate the health and educational impacts of climate change for low-income communities and communities of color. For example, research shows that pupils of color
disproportionately attend school in aging facilities, many of which do not have air-conditioning, air conditioning, and that an estimated 5 percent of the gap in standardized test scores between Black and Hispanic pupils and their White counterparts can be attributed to heat exposure.
(d) California’s nearly 11,000 public elementary and secondary schools are a significant part of the state’s infrastructure, comprising 125,000 acres of grounds and 730,000,000 square feet of facilities that produce substantial emissions of greenhouse gases and other environmental impacts. The approximately fifteen billion dollars ($15,000,000,000) spent by state, county, and other local agencies
each year to build, maintain, and operate school buildings and grounds are an important lever for helping to achieve the state’s decarbonization and resilience goals.
(e) Maintenance, operation, renovation, and construction of elementary and secondary school campuses for health, sustainability, and resilience supports family-sustaining jobs in growing industries across a range of skill levels and job types throughout the state. In addition, the modernization of school infrastructure will support the health and safety of the educators and classified employees who work every day in these facilities.
(f) Extraordinary federal grant and incentive programs, including programs enacted pursuant to the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (Public Law 117-58) and Inflation Reduction Act
of 2022 (Public Law 117-169), have been established to enable public schools to purchase and install energy-efficient electrical infrastructure, including solar panels, energy storage systems, geothermal heat pumps, and electric schoolbuses. Local school district leaders need guidance and support to expediently secure competitive grants and leverage these incentives before they expire.
(g) Management of public education infrastructure so it is healthy, sustainable, and resilient necessarily involves coordination, planning, and funds from multiple state agencies, local school districts, municipalities, and private sector partners.
25995.1.
For purposes of this chapter, the following definitions apply:(a) “Local educational agency” means a school district, county office of education, charter school, or special education local plan area.
(b) “Master plan” means the Master Plan for Healthy, Sustainable, and Climate-Resilient Schools described in subdivision (a) of Section 25995.2.
25995.2.
(a) Upon appropriation by the Legislature for purposes of this chapter, the commission, in consultation with the State Department of Education, Division of the State Architect, Office of Public School Construction, and Natural Resources Agency, shall facilitate an interagency process and stakeholder engagement to develop a Master Plan for Healthy, Sustainable, and Climate-Resilient Schools on or before March 31, 2025.(b) A master plan steering team shall be organized and led by the commission to facilitate the planning process and stakeholder engagement to develop the master plan. The steering team shall include representatives from the State Department of
Education, Division of the State Architect, Office of Public School Construction, and Natural Resources Agency and shall begin meeting at least monthly on or before March 1, 2024, to coordinate and advance the master planning process.
(c) The process to create the master plan shall include input from additional state agencies that provide funding, guidance, and oversight for school buildings and grounds, including the State Board of Education, State Allocation Board, California School
Finance Authority, California Health and Human Services Agency, State Department of Public Health, Strategic Growth Council, Office of Planning and Research, State Air Resources Board, Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery, Public Utilities Commission, California Building Standards Commission, California Environmental Protection Agency, and State Water Resources Control Board.
(d) The process to develop the master plan pursuant to subdivision (a) shall engage a diverse group of stakeholders and experts that reflect the geographic and climate diversity of the state to inform the master plan’s recommendations, including all of the following:
(1) Representatives of local
educational agencies, agencies or their designees, including school administrators, members of governing boards of school districts districts, including small school districts, and members of county boards of education.
(2) Private sector design professionals, including, but not limited to, building and landscape architects and engineers.
(3) School facility
advocacy organizations.
(4) Educators.
(5)Classified school employee and building trade unions.
(5) Representatives of classified school employee unions and building and construction trades councils.
(6) Pupil leaders.
(7) Parent advocates.
(8) Subject
matter and technical experts from the higher education and nonprofit sectors.
(e) To ensure that all objectives, provisions, and recommendations expressed in the master plan also express and enact the state’s commitment to educational equity, the master plan steering team shall undertake or solicit and be informed by analysis employing geographic cross-referencing among areas where climate-related hazards, such as heat indices and air pollution, are elevated and where there are concentrated populations of pupils who may be especially vulnerable to stresses and disruptions, including socioeconomically disadvantaged pupils, pupils of color, English learners, and pupils with disabilities.
(f) The completed master plan shall be provided electronically to the
Governor, the appropriate policy and fiscal committees of the Legislature, the commission, the Superintendent of Public Instruction, the State Architect, the Office of Public School Construction, the Secretary of the Natural Resources Agency, and leadership of the state agencies identified in subdivision (c). The State Department of Education, Division of the State Architect, Office of Public School Construction, and Natural Resources Agency shall make the master plan publicly available on their respective internet websites.
25995.3.
The master plan shall include all of the following:(a) (1) (A) An assessment of a representative sample of the state’s public elementary and secondary school buildings and grounds that includes building and site sizes and location, building age, whether and when the building and building systems such as heating, ventilation, and
air-conditioning air conditioning were last modernized, age and fuel source for all building systems and major appliances, scores under the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s ENERGY STAR system, and energy and water expenditures in the three most recent school years. The plan shall also include recommendations for building ongoing capacity and systems to track and analyze this data to inform planning and investment decisions. In addition, the steering team shall catalog and utilize use existing and previously collected data on the condition and performance of school infrastructure to inform the plan.
(B) An assessment of a representative sample of the state’s public school buildings and grounds for both of the following:
(i) The school and surrounding community’s vulnerability to climate hazards, such as heat, wildfire, landslide, sea level rise, flood risk, and electrical grid reliability, and adaptation potential.
(ii) Emissions of greenhouse gases, sustainability, and mitigation potential.
(2) For purposes of this subdivision, the sample of school buildings and grounds shall be representative of geographic and climate zones, the size of the local educational agency’s pupil population, building age, urban and rural communities, and pupil demographics.
Through study of the representative sample of schools, the assessment shall identify the aspects of a school that indicate high-priority status for intervention and investment.
(3) For purposes of this subdivision, the representative sample may be provided by local education educational agencies that agree to participate in the master plan’s development.
(b) A set of priorities, benchmarks, and milestones for health, resilience, and decarbonization of California’s public school campuses and support facilities in alignment with the state’s climate and equity goals. These priorities, benchmarks, and milestones
shall do all of the following:
(1) Encompass recommendations for school buildings, school grounds, and support facilities.
(2) Account for the need for local educational agencies to maintain fiscal sustainability and responsibly invest local and state funding.
(3) Prioritize schools and communities that are disproportionately impacted by climate-related hazards and by structural inequities in the state’s economy and education system.
(c) Actionable steps and state agency roles within each priority area and an estimate of the costs to implement and achieve the benchmarks and milestones over a multiyear period, and the fiscal, health, and learning costs of
inaction.
(d) Guidance for the Legislature and Governor to inform the development of infrastructure-related programs and the identification of the financial resources for local educational agencies to implement the recommendations and achieve the goals of the master plan. This guidance shall be informed by policy and institutional analyses to understand state and local climate adaptation capacities, limitations, including existing demand for available financial resources, and opportunities within California’s public school system.
(e) Recommendations on future school infrastructure spending, including guidance on infrastructure-related budget proposals and state bond measures to do all of the following:
(1) Align
spending with the state’s goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2045 and climate adaptation and extreme heat action plans.
(2) Position California schools to take full advantage of incentives and funding for decarbonization and climate adaptation within relevant federal legislation, including the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (Public Law 117-58) and Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (Public Law 117-169).
(3) Equitably identify climate-vulnerable communities for priority investment.
(f) Guidance for local school infrastructure funding measures that align with state decarbonization and climate adaptation goals.
(g) Guidance on the roles of
state and county agencies and other partners in providing technical assistance to local educational agencies to support sustainable and climate-resilient school infrastructure.
(h) Recommendations to ensure that local educational agencies have access to sufficient technical assistance, professional learning, training programs, and pipelines of sustainability and climate-resilience personnel to implement decarbonization and adaptation plans that include high road labor standards, project labor agreements with unionized workforces, workforce development, and training opportunities for current local educational agency employees who construct, operate, and maintain school infrastructure. The recommendations and guidelines shall be consistent with Section 45103.1 of the Education Code to ensure that the implementation of plan recommendations is performed by current employees and staff.
regarding the roles of current employees and staff in the implementation of the plan.
(i) Recommendations for state and local leaders from the public and private sectors to connect sustainable and climate-resilient school buildings and grounds to learning opportunities for pupils, green career and technical education, and pathways to green economy careers that support and advance statewide sustainability and resilience.
(j) Recommendations for county and city governments to more effectively include local educational agencies in their decarbonization and climate adaptation efforts.
25995.4.
To guide the implementation of well-aligned state investments in healthy, sustainable, climate-resilient school infrastructure, the commission, or the commission’s designee, shall enter into a contract with one or more nongovernmental entities to review existing research and data, support and coordinate the master plan development process, and conduct research on priority areas of study identified pursuant to Section 25995.3.