By Marianne Dhenin for Next City and Nexus Media News. .
Broadcast version by Edwin J. Viera for New York News Connection reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration

The new schoolyard at PS 184M Shuang Wen, a grade school in Manhattan's Chinatown, features new play equipment, a yoga circle, a stage and basketball and tennis courts.

It also has a porous turf field that can capture an estimated 1.3 million gallons of stormwater runoff, according to New York City's Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).

The turf field sits atop infiltration basins, reservoirs capable of holding large volumes of stormwater. These basins, paired with a grass-roof gazebo, a student-run rain garden and a slew of new trees, can help New York City better absorb extreme precipitation, which is becoming more frequent and severe with climate change.

"Green infrastructure intercepts stormwater before it can reach a catch basin and allows it to be naturally absorbed into the ground," explained a representative from DEP. "This creates additional capacity in the sewer system and helps to reduce flooding."

Urban planners, architects and designers around the world are looking to make cities spongier - using nature-based solutions to better absorb water. In dense cities like New York, where open space is scarce, officials are rethinking a neighborhood mainstay: the school playground.

"Carving out the space, the actual acreage to create a new park can sometimes be cost prohibitive," said Danielle Denk, director of the Community Schoolyards Initiative at Trust for Public Land (TPL). "But if there's a schoolyard, that's land that is often not used to the greatest advantage, and when it can be transformed ... it becomes a really smart strategy for park creation."

Cities across the country have begun to uproot asphalt in favor of lush, green schoolyards - or at least porous turf. TPL has helped transform more than 200 schoolyards - upgrades including adding play spaces and shaded areas - in New York City over the last 30 years with financial support from various city agencies and nonprofits. The Berkeley, California-based non-profit Green Schoolyards America has been collaborating with schools on similar projects around the globe for over a decade. And last year, Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) introduced the Living Schoolyards Act, a bill that would direct federal resources toward greening school grounds. Several states, including California, Colorado and Maryland, have introduced similar legislation or guidelines.

According to TPL, most of the 90,000 public schoolyards - spanning some two million acres - nationwide are covered in asphalt, a combination of petroleum products that creates runoff when it rains and bakes in the sun.

Concrete and asphalt contribute to urban heat islands, increasing average daytime temperatures by as much as seven degrees in hot weather. Green plots of land in cities do the opposite, reducing surrounding temperatures by up to seven degrees. That can mean the difference between life and death during heat waves - which are increasing in severity and frequency as the planet heats up.

Shuang Wen Public School was a perfect candidate for an update. Located in a floodplain near the East River, its schoolyard was underwater after Superstorm Sandy struck in 2012.

Nine years later, when Hurricane Ida tore through the city, "there was not even a puddle after the tremendous amount of rain that we had," said Mary Alice Lee, TPL's New York City Playgrounds Director.

Schoolyards can do more than absorb rainwater and cool neighborhoods. They can also help close the park equity gap nationwide: One hundred million Americans, including 28 million kids, do not live within a ten-minute walk from a park or green space. Communities of color and low-income neighborhoods have even less access to green spaces.

"Schoolyards are an important way to create access to a park," said Denk. "When they're open to the community after hours, they can serve so many needs." Studies show that access to green spaces supports physical and mental health.

Officials appear to be taking note. According to TPL, in 2022, at least 73 of the nation's 100 largest cities opened schoolyards after hours to the general public, up from just 44 cities in 2018.

Schoolyard improvements are good for students, too.

Studies have linked vegetation in schoolyards to better school-wide academic performance, even after controlling for significant confounding factors like student poverty and minority status. Researchers suggest these improvements in academic achievement may be thanks to green schoolyards' ability to decrease stress and mental fatigue, increase physical activity, and foster more creative play during recess.

Shuang Wen principal Jeremy Kabinoff said the new playground has allowed administrators to create clubs and host events that would not have been possible before: new tennis and track programs, a soccer league and an outdoor Halloween festival that drew more than 1,000 attendees last year.

When COVID-19 restrictions forced classroom closures, Shuang Wen was able to move classroom learning and other events outside into a still-comfortable learning environment. Kabinoff said the new facilities, including the stage, "gave students the opportunity to experience an authentic graduation experience as well, especially since COVID-19 eliminated many in-person events."

Shuang Wen students helped design the new schoolyard through discussions, surveys and votes. Denk from TPL, who has worked with dozens of schools to upgrade yards, said students get just as excited about green infrastructure as new playground equipment. She fondly remembers an example from a group of 4th-grade students in Philadelphia.

"We learned all about water quality issues, flooding in the city, combined sewer overflows, and how the city is working to address it and how it's a big challenge," she says. "The students came back feeling very empowered to work on a solution in their schoolyard."

When the time came for students to decide between expanding their playground or building a rain garden to help manage stormwater, the students chose the rain garden. "That is exciting to me," says Denk. "When students are given the chance to do the right thing for their environment and their community, they will choose that, and that motivation carries forward in terms of how they see themselves as environmental actors and in relation to climate change."


Marianne Dhenin wrote this article for Next City.


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School buses are getting cleaner in Washington state after this year's legislative session.

Lawmakers in Olympia passed House Bill 1368, which will fund the purchase of zero emission school buses.

Rep. Tana Senn, D-Mercer Island, said the program is getting off the ground quickly.

"As we work towards that long-term goal of all new school buses being zero emission, we're kick-starting this year with $40 million in grants to school districts in overburdened communities," Senn explained.

Going forward, Senn noted school districts will have to purchase zero-emission vehicles once the total cost of ownership is equal to or lower than the cost of diesel vehicles. The state is leveraging the state's Climate Commitment Act resources to fund the transition of its 10,000 school buses.

Devin Denney, director of transportation for Highline Public Schools in King County, which already has electric school buses in its fleet, said he has driven the electric buses and talked about some of their benefits from a driver's perspective.

"You're not competing against that engine noise, the kids aren't competing against the engine noise," Denney observed. "It's a much quieter bus all the way around. The major advantage, of course, is that there's no tailpipe emissions with an electric bus, so our kids' health is better protected."

Senn emphasized health studies have shown there are negative health effects from diesel vehicles for kids, and it is easy to understand why.

"If you think about kids waiting to get on their bus in front of an elementary school and you have this line of buses idling, letting out diesel fumes right at the height of a little child, it becomes obvious that this is probably not the most healthy thing for our children," Senn added.


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Today, in honor of Earth Day, climate advocates are asking California lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom to rally around a plan to put a $15 billion bond measure on the November ballot.

If passed, the bond measure would fund a range of climate resiliency measures.

Sam Hodder, president and CEO of the Save the Redwoods League, said March was the tenth month in a row to break monthly heat records.

"I think Earth Day is a terrific opportunity for the broader public to recognize how nature is critical for resilience, for our quality of life, for our mental and physical health, and for our communities more broadly," Hodder outlined.

Two similar bills to put a bond measure on the ballot are under consideration in Sacramento, Assembly Bill 1567 and Senate Bill 867, but they have been stalled since last summer. The bond would finance many programs, including some to restore wetlands that guard against sea-level rise, and to remove dead wood in forests to guard against mega-fires, which Hodder noted have killed 20% of the giant sequoias in recent years.

Opponents pointed out the state already faces a budget deficit and cannot afford to take on more debt. But only 5% of California's old-growth coastal redwoods remain, mostly due to aggressive logging many decades ago.

Hodder argued the giant trees can be critical ingredients in the fight against climate change because they trap so much carbon.

"Redwood forests sequester more carbon per acre than any other forest system in the world," Hodder emphasized. "We have the opportunity to transition the redwood forest from something that is vulnerable to climate change to something that is helping to solve and address the climate crisis."

Experts blame climate change for California's wild weather over the past few years, which has been marked by extreme drought, devastating fires and flooding rain.

A new report from the National Wildlife Federation warns that the effects of climate change in the Quad Cities, along the Iowa-Illinois border, will be severe.

But researchers got the public involved in studying to find ways to head off some of the most pressing concerns.

The report says climate change means a warmer, wetter future for the Quad Cities, which straddle the Mississippi River in Iowa and Illinois.

But rather than repeat what experts have already been saying about drastic flooding along the Big Muddy, Prairie Rivers Network River Health and Resiliency Organizer Nina Struss said researchers and Quad Cities residents brainstormed solutions to tackle the effects of climate change.

"Flooding and flash flooding were the top concerns," said Struss. "Extreme heat was also a big concern, as well as drought and other extreme weather events."

Researchers combined that information with hard science at the University of Illinois to create 3D models depicting what climate-induced flooding along the Mississippi could look like in the future.

The survey also asked people to identify which geographical areas and populations are most at risk from the effects of climate change, and worked with the community on solutions to mitigate some of them.

Struss said this research proposes what are known as nature-based solutions to combat the effects of climate change - restoring, preserving and even expanding existing ecosystems, like wetlands and tree canopies. But creating more eco-friendly infrastructure, too.

"Can we work to maybe have our pavements that we're putting in be more permeable, so that they can absorb that water and have that higher water-holding capacity?" said Struss. "Can we focus on areas to plant more native plants that have stronger root systems, versus ones that have shorter root systems, to help with that water-holding capacity?"

Struss said this research isn't a one-off. It will continue to change, she said, as the climate changes, the needs become more clear, and the effects more drastic.

She said progress in addressing climate change relies on more research, education and funding.




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