Legislature introduces bills to advance climate resilient schools
This week, the California Legislature Introduced three new bills to advance healthy, sustainable, climate resilient schools. Together, these bills will help the state address urgent infrastructure gaps on school campuses, including cooling in classrooms, shade on school yards, and backup power during grid emergencies. These bills represent progress towards the Climate Ready Schools Coalition’s vision for healthy, resilient, decarbonized schools for all. Read more about each bill, below.
SB 1182, the Climate Resilient Schools Act of 2024, is authored by Senate Majority Leader Lena Gonzalez and would task the state with creating a state-wide master plan for climate resilient schools. This plan will help coordinate state-wide action to provide schools with clear information, direction and support to adapt and modernize their facilities and operations in alignment with the state’s climate adaptation, decarbonization, and extreme heat goals. A similar bill authored by Sen. Gonzalez last year passed through both bodies of the legislature with overwhelming support, but was ultimately vetoed by Gov. Gavin Newsom. We’re hopeful that this year state leaders will be able to advance this legislation to help California schools realize much-needed cost-savings, spend local and state bond dollars more wisely, and identify new local, state, grant, private, and federal funding opportunities.
SB 1374 was introduced by Senator Josh Becker. This bill aims to ensure schools benefit financially from installing solar panels and battery storage systems on their campuses, keeping more money in classrooms while transitioning to clean energy. SB 1374 is designed to reverse regulations recently implemented by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) last year that significantly reduced the cost savings for schools investing in solar panels. Many members of the Climate Ready Schools Coalition advocated to see that these regulations did not pass, though they ultimately did. This bill is sponsored by UndauntedK12 and the School Energy Coalition, who recently authored a brief on this issue, here. See the bill’s fact sheet, here.
SB 1091 (Menjivar) is a spot bill that aims to reduce barriers for schoolyard greening projects, which can protect students from rising temperatures due to climate change, address racial and regional inequities in access to nature, and provide environmental, health and learning benefits. In California, certain school-ground greening projects that remove asphalt, plant shade trees and create nature-based outdoor learning spaces are required to bring the path of travel to the project up to code without a limit on the cost. This represents a significant barrier to greening school grounds because even a small project can trigger expensive upgrades. Existing law, SB 515 (Stern), limits the cost of complying with providing an accessible path of travel to certain shade structure projects to 20% of the total project cost. SB 1091 would do the same for greening projects. See the bill’s fact sheet, here.
