School District Spotlight: Celebrating Community & Collaboration in Modesto City Schools
Thanks to the support of our growing community, over the past year CAPS has rapidly expanded from our pilot program in Porterville Unified School District into seven school districts, enabling our organization to provide hands-on, paid learning opportunities in green careers to high school students across California. In this article, we spotlight Modesto City Schools, one of the recent districts to join our growing community and the site of an exciting approach to collaboration and community that is providing opportunities for the next generation of climate leaders.
With a longtime commitment to sustainability and in a community where 82% to 86% of families live below the poverty level and asthma rates are some of the highest in the state, Modesto City Schools (MCS) — located in the heart of California’s Central Valley — is an ideal location for the CAPS program to plug into a well-established sustainability program with our paid green-careers internship program.
MCS has a long history of improving its environmental footprint and energy efficiency through upgrades and retrofits, enabled by funding through the California Clean Energy Jobs Act (Proposition 39) as well as $17M in state and federal grants such as the EPA Clean School Bus Program grant, and funding from the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution District. In 2022, Gilbert Blue Feather Rosas joined MCS as Director || Sustainability and Adaptation. Since then, the District has converted almost half of their 62 bus Diesel fleet to Battery Electric, added 6 outdoor classrooms called SOLES (Sustainable Outdoor Learning Environments, contracted over $50M in Solar Carports and Electric school Bus charging Infrastructure, added Air Monitoring at all the schools, and focused on student career technical education (CTE). Modesto City Schools Funded stipends for Site Teacher Coordinators to establish “environmental clubs” at all 34 schools across the district, which enables students and teachers to run sustainability programs.
Through a partnership with Cenergistic, a private energy-efficiency firm that designs and implements customized energy savings programs for school districts, MCS achieved energy savings of more than $1 million between 2020 and 2022, implementing programs such as energy-monitoring software, helping the district identify sources of energy waste.
The commitment to sustainability and the successful and active partnership between MCS and Cenergistic make the district perfectly poised for a fruitful collaboration with CAPS. Through the CAPS program, high school students take on sustainability-focused paid internships, gaining valuable career experience for in-demand green jobs.
“We now have 13 CAPS interns who are getting paid to do sustainability work such as monitoring our energy usage,” says Blue Feather Rosas. “As a Student Action Group, they create strategies and implementation plans for our school sites that help reduce electricity usage. It's a way for them to see real results at their campuses.”
A Synergistic Approach to Green Career Training
Through its project-based learning program, CAPS has bolstered MCS’ capacity to empower students to lead sustainability projects in a way that prepares them for future careers, while also giving them a way to make a difference and earn income now. “Working with both Cenergistic and CAPS is a perfect opportunity for collaboration,” says Blue Feather Rosas. ”CAPS” focus is on teaching students how to do this work because they are educators; meanwhile, Cenergistic brings their expertise as consultants who do this work with a variety of school districts and can show the environmental clubs and CAPS site leads about trends and data analysis.”
Blue Feather Rosas sees an exciting synergy between the sustainability projects he’s undertaken with Cenergistic and the career-training opportunities now offered through the CAPS partnership. “A lot of the things we're doing with our sustainability initiatives are dovetailing and enabling students to be involved,” he says. “For example, now that we’ve transitioned to electric buses, we have air monitors at every school site so students can graph and note the differences in air quality at the drop-off/pick-up sites during those time periods. Now they can see how that project affects the air quality at all times of the day. That’s relevant because, for example, San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control recently increased its hiring by three times. Now our students could qualify for those jobs with the things they’re learning through this career technical education work.”
CAPS plugs into MCS’ career technical education program in five key areas: clean transportation, building decarbonization, food systems, water conservation, and water management. Because of its focus on collaborating with industry professionals in related climate fields, the CAPS program brings a unique opportunity for real-world experiences for students. “CAPS internships provide our students with paid hands-on working opportunities that give them tangible experience in green careers,” says Rachelle Barkus, Senior Director Educational Options. “Thanks to our partnership with CAPS, we are able to offer paid internship experiences that not only allow students the opportunity to prepare for future careers but also allow them to take action today to advance sustainability measures within our school community.”
On the flip side of the same coin, the CAPS program enables professionals — such as the team from Cenergestic — to share their experience with students in a meaningful way, and to ensure they’re leveraging their expertise to help fuel the skilled workforce of the future. “Research shows we are going to need many more skilled workers to fuel the shift to a green economy, in California and across the country,” says Noe Cisneros, Energy Specialist for Cenergistic. “Working with students is inspiring for us as we see the next generation readying to step into the important roles that will help us work together to mitigate climate change.”
Opportunities for People & Planet
While green career training is an essential part of the offering of the MCS sustainability program with Cenergistic and CAPS, perhaps even more important is empowering young people — nearly 40% of whom report experiencing climate anxiety — to take control of their climate future.
“Our community is 82% to 86% disadvantaged. Because we have great leadership who have invested in the right things, MCS has state-of-the-art benefits that oftentimes you don't see in disadvantaged communities. Why do we have green bumpers on our buses? How does solar help reduce our grid dependency? It's really important for students to understand why these things matter,” Blue Feather Rosas says. “We hear a lot of bad news and there are a lot of things we can’t fix as individuals. But through this work, everybody can do their part and realize they can help. They can help us save energy. They can reduce greenhouse gas emissions. That gives students a way to make a positive difference within their community, and it encourages and empowers them. That's why I'm so excited that students can learn in this way and take ownership of these projects.”
Blue Feather Rosas also sees the CAPS program as a way for students with different learning styles to get a new kind of educational experience. “Not all students learn the same way, right? Not all students can sit there quietly all day and do well on standardized tests,” he says. “Some students need to be challenged in other ways; some students need to understand how and what they’re doing is part of a bigger cause.”
The CAPS program and the energy-efficiency upgrades the schools are making also help validate to the community, funders, and policy-makers that districts like Modesto are a great investment. “We're being good stewards,” Blue Feather Rosas says. “We're showing our students and the community that we are putting the bonds and grants we've been entrusted with to good use. We're showing that environmental and financial benefits can intermesh; it's not one or the other.”
As a sustainability professional, making the connection between student success and green career training is a satisfying one for Blue Feather Rosas. He sees how his role as a connector is making important progress in the work to mitigate climate change while simultaneously providing invaluable career experience for students.
“If you do job searches around sustainability on Indeed or other job boards, you’ll see that there are a lot out there and all of them are underfilled,” he says. “The future is going to have a lot of sustainability jobs. Yet when people hear ‘sustainability jobs,’ most aren’t sure what it really means. Sustainability work can happen in a lot of different industries or departments. You can use a lens of sustainability whether you’re looking at financial savings or energy conservation or reducing carbon footprint. This is a new area of opportunity and it's important for students to learn about this field as a career option.”
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