At-large City Councilor John Connolly sets his sights on creating multi-million-dollar environmental academy
Little girls and boys frolic on swing sets whittled from recycled beech wood. Teenagers harvest organic rutabagas and stew them with locally farmed carrots in Earth-friendly kitchens. Classmates teach one another about conscious living. Folks develop new technologies to help make the landscape lovelier. Solar panels abound.
That’s not just an eco-Rockwellian image of an archetypal Jamaica Plain household. It’s a description of the K-12 environmental sciences academy that At-Large City Councilor John Connolly is determined to build in Boston. There’s currently a groundswell of nationwide support for such efforts, fueled by federal and state funds tagged for sustainable development. And while the Hub already has a sparkling green reputation — from its famously progressive environmental leadership at City Hall and Emerald Necklace parks system to its more symbolic Irish heritage and pro-hoops team — Connolly’s institute would help stretch this verdant kingdom beyond the low-emission buildings that tower over Back Bay.
As the top vote getter in this past November’s at-large election, Connolly is in pole position to advance his green-school agenda, which he first proposed in his freshman term two years ago. The West Roxbury councilor now chairs the committees on Environment and Health and Education, and this particular project gives him a vehicle with which he can take action on those tandem passions. But the task of designing, funding, and operating one of the world’s most dynamic environmental learning incubators poses a titanic challenge — particularly with Boston facing painful budget cuts across the board, and with pet projects coming under intense scrutiny. But Connolly sees a forest through the line items, and will soon host the first of four 2010 hearings designed to draft specifics for his otherwise inchoate plan. The question is whether he can rally adequate support for a green dream that could cost the city as much as $100 million.
Building a coalition
Due to fluctuating material costs and many other variants, there’s no telling the actual price tag of Connolly’s proposal. One similar development, the private Sidwell Friends Middle School in Washington, DC, ran a $28 million infrastructural tab retrofitting one building and adding a new structure for a combined 72,500 square feet that serves 350 students (including Sasha and Malia Obama). Connolly’s K-12 planned project is at least three times that size in physical scope, and has a multifaceted mission that would necessitate further funding for targeted curriculum planning, career training, and outreach programs.
“There are a few goals here,” says Connolly, who ideally wants the green academy built from scratch on the site of the old Boston State Hospital in Mattapan. “One is to produce young citizens who are dedicated to sustainable living, and who can go out and get jobs in the green economy, whether they’re installing solar panels or working on bio-fuel technology as a chemist. Another is for kids from other Boston public schools to be able to use the facility, and for all segments of the population to be able to come there for green trade skills.”
Merrillee Harrigan, vice-president of education for the Alliance to Save Energy (a DC-based nonprofit that promotes and consults on green development, including Sidwell Friends), says that a successful green school consists of much more than just an eco-friendly edifice. Such academies, she says, must also visibly track consumption and conservation in order to insure that they yield the smallest possible carbon footprint. To those ends and others, Connolly is slating four City Council hearings in 2010 — on curriculum, workforce ties, sustainable citizenship, and financing — to substantiate his prospectus.
Though Boston Chief of Environment and Energy Jim Hunt would prefer to see a retrofit on an existing school than an entirely new campus, the bureaucratic consensus is that Connolly’s concept is feasible. After all, Mayor Tom Menino serves on the National Board of Green Schools. But despite the possibility that such an undertaking would be somewhat subsidized by the Massachusetts School Building Authority and the US Green Building Council, among others, even optimists have difficulty envisioning this education oasis coming to Boston any time soon. “The idea is a great one,” says Roxbury Councilor Chuck Turner, who serves as vice-chair of the Education Committee. “But the dilemma is how we’re going to fund it. Right now we have a $500 million deficit for school repairs.”
Even so, trends suggest that similar forward-thinking sacrifices are proliferating nationally. More than 200 learning facilities across America have received certification from the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) — a DC-based nonprofit that sets national green standards — with another 1600 on course. Of that entire group, only one, Roosevelt elementary in Hyde Park, is a Boston Public School (others are acknowledged by the statewide program Massachusetts-Collaborative for High Performance Schools).
Like father, likes harnessing the sun
Connolly, a lawyer, councilor, husband, and father of two young children, was born in Roslindale in 1973 and promptly recruited into the green army. His father, Michael, served as secretary of the commonwealth from1979 to 1994, and was a trendsetter on climate legislation. Though opponents chided him for expending resources on causes they deemed beyond his jurisdiction — some labeled him “Secretary of Space” — the elder Connolly pushed his campaign in 1987 to save the ozone, and that year even led a delegation to the United Nations conference that initiated the Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer.Councilor Connolly attributes his environmental enlightenment to his father’s politics, and to traditional thrift.
“The Irish population in Boston has a great environmental spirit,” he says. “In my house as a kid, if it got cold you put on an extra sweater, and you turned off the lights when you left the room. I definitely had those principles around energy back when this city was a different place.”
After working with at-risk adolescents in Manhattan for four years — the “most positively influential experience” of his life — Connolly returned to Boston in 1998 to study law and teach at the Boston Renaissance Charter School downtown. Those years were “frustrating,” he says, since the Renaissance was stretched beyond its capability. “I learned a lot from that,” says Connolly. “I got a comparison point for an urban school that was struggling, as opposed to an urban school that worked.” Nearly a decade later, with lessons considered, Connolly believes his environmental-sciences academy could be a prime emblem for the latter.
Whether solutions lie in Connolly’s vision or another, workplace and ecological realities demand acceleration toward sensible school development, especially amidst economic turbulence. A 2006 study of 30 green schools across the country — including 11 here in Massachusetts — shows that, while such initiatives cost on average two percent more than conventional schools, they generate 20 times more financial benefits in the form of everything from water and emissions to asthma reduction and teacher retention. Sounds like a solution to more than a few of Boston’s education issues.
“This academy is not going to come out of [next year's] budget,” says Connolly. “But I want to push the preliminary work now so that when we hit better economic times we’re ready to hit the ground running. This is incredibly important; truthfully, I would like to see this done even if we’re in bad financial times.”
Chris Faraone can be reached at cfaraone@phx.com.
