Green Schoolyards of America

Green Schoolyards America partners with school districts and public agencies across the U.S. to establish large-scale living schoolyard programs that transform school grounds into ecologically rich, park-like green spaces. Our goal is to improve children’s health, learning, and happiness while contributing to communities’ ecological and climate resilience. We are working to change the norm for school ground design, use, and management so that all children will have access to the natural world in the places they already visit on a daily basis. We center equity in our work and collaborate with communities that have the greatest need for educational, environmental, health, and open space improvements. Our programs support the living school ground movement, build relationships that help it succeed, and work to embed this perspective in our existing institutions and policy frameworks.

Green Schoolyards America’s work is highly interdisciplinary and sits at the intersection of the environmental, health, education, city planning, and public policy fields. The problems we are trying to solve are larger than any single organization can address alone, so we convene and lead large-scale, collective impact initiatives that align many organizations and institutions to work toward robust, enduring systems change-level solutions. We value the power of the written word and share our ideas through professional presentations and written materials including books, articles, webpages, newsletters, policy guidance, and more.