Green on the Hilltop 2009

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Esti Bernstein and Amanda Cooke, Class of 2009, at the Earth Day celebration.

Green

By Kevin Rea

on the Hilltop

a community effort

High on the hilltop where the seasons tell their story, stand while the river floods and fills the sea. Teach us to honor all thy paths of beauty; lead us forever in faith and in duty.

In my work this year as Hackley’s K-12 Administrator for Environmental Initiatives I have been reminded of the words spoken by the character Roy Batty in the film “Blade Runner.” About to reach his built in expiration date as an android (androids live for an even more limited time compared to humans), Batty expresses his deepest desires: “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the coast of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the darkness at Tan Hauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain. Time to die.” Batty knows he is going to die soon after speaking these words. His “tears in the rain” are tears of sadness that he will no longer be able to experience the “awesome” wonders of the world. Batty’s words imply that the beauty of the world and the beauty of mankind’s engagement with it are intimately connected to our core identities. Another way of reading his words is to say that we are most fully realized when we engage with the world as sensitively as we can.

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This year I have seen many wonderful sights and participated in many rewarding conversations around Hackley about our environment. I have seen many actions that are helping Hackley make our world a more sustainable place to live and to learn. The articles which follow tell the stories of the incredible contributions taking place in each of our three divisions. Some of the stories include: KRD in the Lower School recycling cups and napkins for snack; Bill Smith, Director of Buildings and Grounds and Marco Morales, our Flik manager, restarting a school-wide composting program and reducing our waste output; Peter McAndrew, our Chief Financial Officer, and Bill Smith working to achieve 90-95% use of compact fluorescent light bulbs around campus and to cease using pesticides on our campus; Julia Carson ’98 working on an organic farm and connecting up with the Hackley group at the Bedford Environmental Summit; the incredible work Tessa Johnson in our

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Kindergarteners Lead the Way….

Beth Retzloff, Kindergarten teacher Science department is doing on long-term ecology projects; Manna Ohmoto-Whitfield, Science Department Chair whose department blazes a trail on many environmental fronts including interdisciplinary work with other departments; Ryan Trapani’s visit from the Catskill Forest Association who is helping Hackley enhance the biodiversity of its forest; HEAL’s Earth Week extravaganza planned by seniors Amanda Cooke and Esti Bernstein; the twelve intrepid Hackley students and three faculty chaperones who braved the snows of Washington DC in March to attend the Power Shift ’09 environmental summit; and the indomitable Helen Erickson whose tireless work on every environmental front and whose wisdom and support have inspired us all to keep challenging ourselves throughout the year.

In looking to the future it is my great pleasure to announce that Anne Gatschet will serve as Hackley’s Upper School Environmental Coordinator. Anne brings a deep passion for environmental awareness, a fantastic vision for how to integrate this awareness into curriculum design and a wealth of experience to this new role. For the last two years she has worked creatively to introduce environmental projects on sustainability into her Spanish IV classes. As part of this year’s Earth Week, Anne initiated both the Learning Earth Contest and the Middle School Earth Photo Contest. This year she also attended the Bedford Sustainability Conference and Power Shift ’09 in Washington DC where she worked closely with our HEAL student leaders to bring inspiring ideas back to the Hilltop.

When it comes to environmental initiatives Hackley is working hard to realize its educational mission through cultivating sensitivity to our landscape. If, as W.H. Auden wrote, “the first condition of a successful school is a beautiful situation,” our environmental awareness is helping us define success across our three divisions in a way that renews us all. In this way we also connect to our past and those alumni who have shaped our environment in positive ways. Like Roy Batty we gaze at our surroundings on the Hilltop with a sense of profound possibility.

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Hackley’s Lower School has joined ranks with the Upper and Middle School in an effort to make the entire school more “Green.” Students in KRD adopted the habit of using reusable cups and napkins for snack, significantly cutting down on the number of paper cups and napkins used on a daily basis. In the Lower School dining hall, all students, teachers and staff are composting their food products and paper napkins.

This project came to the Lower School due to the efforts of Hackely’s Earth Action League (an Upper School group known as HEAL) who worked closely with Mr. Morales and Mr. Smith to make composting a school-wide possibility. In addition, many classes took part in a number of activities for Earth Day. In an effort to reduce the amount of energy used on a daily basis, classes turned off their lights on sunny days; as a school, ladybugs were released to help control the aphid population on campus; plants were propagated with the help of Mrs. Erickson; garbage was collected from around the campus; and teachers are taking their students outside more often in order to take advantage of the beautiful campus and the learning opportunities it provides. On a note of special interest, the Kindergarten Post Office challenged the Lower School to “GO GREEN” by not using envelopes this year in order to save on the amount of paper used.

The post office was only open for business for four days, but during that time, students in both Kindergarten classes, collected, postmarked, sorted, counted and delivered a record 1,145 letters that had been written mainly by Lower School students. The Lower School may consist of Hackley’s youngest students, but they are among those who are working hard to make a difference in order to help save our Earth.

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Powershift ’09

Kevin Rea “A Crisis is a Terrible Thing to Waste” –Majora Carter When I first received the official brochure for Power Shift ’09, I paused over the cover for a while. Printed in white bold letters was the phrase: “Historic National Summit.” OK, the English teacher in me thought, that sounds good, but it’s surely hyperbole. I decided to take twelve of Hackley’s finest students from grades 9-12 who are committed to sustainable living as well as two other “green” chaperones to Washington DC to “test the thesis.” Here are just a few samplings of what we discovered on our remarkable journey together.

On the first night we walked into the Washington DC convention center to see thousands of young people crowding the halls, planning their itineraries and making their way towards the only room large enough to accommodate everyone for the succession of rousing keynote addresses. Among many things we learned from an incredible array of speakers was that “Obama” was not just the new President’s name, but these letters also stood for a new acronym, one we should all emulate: Officially Behaving As Magnificent Americans. Clayton Thomas Muller, an activist for indigenous self-determination and environmental justice, asked our students to conceptualize climate change in terms of social inequity, asking us to, “work together to make wind and not war.” The former Mayor of Salt Lake City, Rocky Anderson, followed, citing a national culture of obedience in the U.S. He asked everyone to “shift” from being sheep to “Power Shifting Bulldogs!” Gillian Caldwell, a film-maker and Campaign Director of iSky, cited climate change as the “defining challenge of our generation.” Looking out into the sea of college and high school age cell phone users, Van Jones told the students that each one of them was a “walking technical superpower.”

He exhorted young people to cease using iPods and cell phones as toys and to use them as tools. Declaring that “this goes deeper than solar panels,” Van Jones delivered an impassioned speech about the necessity for Americans to abolish “eco-apartheid” and to create a green economy that Dr. King would be proud of. According to him, we must deal with how we consume water and how we treat each other. The whole human

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family will declare what kind of species we are by the way we handle this global environmental crisis. Over the course of the next two days more speeches followed as well as dozens of creative panel discussions and workshops dedicated to improving the future of the planet. I guess it was when Gus Speth, Dean, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, stood up in front of about three hundred students packed into a lecture hall and suggested that he would be willing to stand shoulder to shoulder with eco activists half his age in the face of the threat of arrest that I thought maybe the brochure’s working thesis had supporting evidence after all.

The most enjoyable and enriching moments for the three chaperones were watching the young Hackley environmentalists in action. On Monday March 2nd, all twelve of them marched in their finest dress through wind and blowing snow to Congressional offices on the Hill for “Lobby Day.” With our green construction helmets (“Get to Work for Climate Change!”) and fresh from a lengthy day of lobby training the day before, we walked into the offices of Representative John Hall of New York and lobbied one of his staffers, asking if we could count on Congressman Hall’s support in passing important green legislation in the future. His staffer said he would be supporting all that the group was asking for. Following that we walked over to the Senate and did the same as part of a group of more than fifty. The trip culminated in a mass rally on the west lawn of the Capitol. Despite the snow and freezing conditions, the Hackley environmentalists protested and lobbied to the end.

On the train on the way back I revisited the original thesis as published in the Power Shift brochure and concluded that I had experienced something with the potential to be truly historic. I had sensed the power of Gandhi’s assertion, “You must be the change you want to see in the world.” Our young Hackley environmentalists have been inspired by Power Shift ’09 to embrace the defining challenge of our time right here on our beloved Hilltop, and they are planning to start right away.

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Natural Science

Manna Ohmoto-Whitfield, Science Department Chair Hackley’s 285 acre campus was one of the main draws for many of us as we chose Hackley as “our school.” The natural history of the campus itself is as much a part of our shared history as the stories of heroics on the field, and of courses and teachers that inspired us to do our best.

The area behind the Lower School provides an ideal outdoor classroom; it allows for a close study of the effects of deer browsing, and provides a wonderful place for the repositioning of the weather station; facilitating better data collection and access for the Lower School science program.

Two years ago, Kurt Boluch rediscovered a bit of this natural history in the form of indices that were compiled by the Hackley legend, Art King, who meticulously recorded the vast wealth of Hackley’s flora and fauna every year over a span of many decades.

Inspired by these indices, the Art and Science began a two year project that began with the framing of four “witness” charcoal drawings from the Advanced Studio art students that not only depict endangered species but draw upon the artist’s own reflection of themselves within the animal kingdom. With generous funding from the HPA, we are now developing a more multi-media showcasing of natural history, centered around one of Art King’s indices with examples of some of the flora and fauna in the index presented in a variety of media, including photographs, pen and ink, charcoal, leaf pressings, watercolor and oil paintings. Laura Wolfgang ’08 and Helen Erickson helped digitally archive the indices for preservation as well as for broader use.

Parallel efforts by Pat White and the Health/PE department have resulted in intensive mapping and topographical analysis of campus by an orienteering company. With new portable and precise lab equipment, we are able to bring data from the field and upload it to computer data bases for analysis. The sensors use GPS systems to locate where specific data has been collected, and we are working to collect bird calls to further identify and record bird sightings; tree mappings to better understand what trees grow and in which locations; long-term water quality sampling from Deer and Salamander vernal ponds as well as the non-vernal pond.

Kurt Boluch is compiling an annual record of bird sightings, and Tessa Johnson and Andy Retzloff have helped compile data from flora and fauna as part of the National Parks Service and National Phenology Network. These records enable us to enter the data into a national database that keeps track of trends over time, which, when combined with data from throughout the nation and over time, can spot trends that are otherwise obscured by yearly or random fluctuations.

We are beginning to track salamander population, habitat and behavior data, and Kurt Boluch’s new Field Biology course has begun to use statistical analysis of bluebird nesting habits to see the impact of a variety of forces on the bluebird populations. Andy Retzloff led an effort to plant over 300 white pine seedlings, a source of nesting materials for bluebird, and when seedlings were eaten by deer, Ecology classes begun to use statistical analysis to take a deer census on campus and look for ways to both protect habitat from deer destruction and to research the effects of deer exclusion areas on campus.

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While Hackley classes have always made forays “into the woods,” the expanded opportunities for nature study have inspired increased collaboration between departments. The English department has joined in the search for an outdoor classroom; whether students are listening for bird calls, analyzing data, receiving instructions for data collection or discussing the Transcendentalists in English class, we envision that the space will receive productive use. We’re also looking to launch a Meteorology program that will further help the Hackley community get in touch with the environment.

Each time we venture out with our students, they become more familiar with the campus and with the data collection systems. As our students become more familiar with the campus and with the data collection systems, they rediscover the excitement of being in the field and gain new insights and appreciation into the power of long-term research. The commitment to natural history that was sustained by Art King and Carl Buessow is alive and well. As Aldous Huxley wrote “We can only love what we know.” Our desire to “go green,” save the Earth and its inhabitants must begin with an understanding of what we have.

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Lower School students check out the lady bugs, about to be released, on Earth Day.

Making “Green” our institutional practice: Bill Smith, Helen Erickson, Peter McAndrew, Devin Luciano, Marco Morales.

Sustainability Efforts in the Day to Day

Helen Erickson Green progress at Hackley has not been restricted to student initiatives, as demonstrated by projects and improvements undertaken by members of the Hackley staff. Marco Morales, Director of Dining Services, is always looking for new ways to manage our food service in a more sustainable way “because it’s the right thing to do.” Realizing that we could learn a lot from the experience of other schools, Marco joined me and Upper School faculty member Shachar Link in a spring 2008 visit to Princeton Day School to learn how to set up a composting system for a school dining room. In November 2008, collaborating with student volunteers, Hackley began a trial run for inhouse composting. It soon became clear that specialized assistance was required to make this program effective, and with the help of Bill Smith, Director of Buildings and Grounds, Hackley located a contractor who was willing to assist us with composting both on and off-site. According to Bill, this has reduced our waste output by a third.

Marco Morales also introduced compostable paper goods and corn starch eating utensils and “glasses” for those occasions when re-usable dinnerware isn’t practical. All cans and bottles are returned or recycled.

Using napkin dispensers rather than napkin baskets has reduced paper waste in general, and of course used napkins join food waste in the compost bin.

Marco and Sous Chef Sophia Gethers joined a group of Hackley students, faculty and staff to attend the day-long Bedford Environmental Summit on January 31st, participating in workshops on food. During the course of the day he met Hackley alumna Julia Carson ’98, who together with her husband Berny Rivas is operating an organic farm in Bedford. With

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330 acres in northern Westchester, Harmosa Harvest occupies one of the last undeveloped tracts of land in the area. Julia’s produce, available on weekends at the Muscoot Farmers Market, is now frequently to be found on the Hackley menu, combining great taste with a reduced carbon footprint. And when Marco discovered a special on Ladybugs for Earth Week, he joined Upper School students from the Green Thumb Club and teachers Beth Retzloff and me to arrange a Lower School Ladybug release. He says, “There are so many avenues to sustainability. Every day you can take a step forward, and each step evolves into something even better.”

Bill Smith, Director of Buildings and Grounds, has worked with Peter McAndrew, Director of Finance, to upgrade campus lighting for the past six to seven years. Today exit lights are entirely LCD, and 9095% of the campus relies on compact fluorescents instead of incandescent bulbs. For the past three years only non-phosphorus fertilizers have been used on Hackley grounds, and beginning last year no herbicides or pesticides were used. Grounds staff regularly attend training sessions on new and more sustainable ways to maintain fields and landscape. For example, Hackley’s field marking paint is bio-degradable, approved by the EPA. Only “green” cleaning products are used. The recycling of cans, bottles and paper is now a matter of course, with convenient disposal bins strategically located around the campus. Bill Smith comments that he feels the students have pushed him to raise his standards of sustainability: “These kids will question what you say, and you’d better have an answer.”

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Peter McAndrew, for his part, is pleased with the computer monitored energy management system that was introduced into Hackley’s older buildings beginning in 2001 and installed in the new Middle and Lower School buildings from the beginning. The system controls not only how long areas of the school are heated, but also staggers the time that they turn on, altogether reducing energy use and cost by 10%.

In our new buildings, water use has been reduced considerably by low flush water toilet technology. And the new library construction, in addition to Hackley’s surviving stone walls, will use significant amounts of recycled construction materials, including recycled cork flooring. The basis of heating and cooling will be geothermal, returning 55 degree water to the building

for winter heating and summer cooling. For Peter McAndrew, these initiatives point to the best of all possible paths–doing the right thing and cutting costs at the same time.

Devin Luciano, Purchasing Agent, agrees with Peter.

For some time she has been investigating cost-effective sources of recycled paper, and last year Hackley moved to using 30% recycled copy paper. Through more research this year, she has located venders who will supply 100% recycled paper which is actually less expensive than the 30% recycled paper we have used until now. Beginning with the new fiscal year in July, Hackley will be purchasing only 100% recycled paper for copying and other paper supply purposes.

A Student’s Perspective As I sit here on a train traveling to one of our country’s more forested states, Maine, memories of the train ride to the epic Power Shift ’09 Environmental Conference flood through my mind, sparking a whole other collection of memories from this year with the Hackley Earth Action League. To HEAL, a highly dedicated and determined team of students, faculty, staff, parents, and alumni, they are not only memories, but experiences and accomplishments that are a reflection of the entire environmental and climate change movement. They are actions and initiatives that inspire, motivate, and engage our community.

They are actions that have made and will continue to make lasting change for the present and the future of everyone and everything on this planet. Who knew what was beginning at the end of last year when HEAL first met underneath the giant oak tree on the Quad, then a team of only a handful of students and faculty. Something began, something larger than any of the first members could ever imagine, that the entire Hackley community would come together and work towards a more sustainable future.

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HEAL’s first initiative, recycling all paper, cans, and bottles, was so successful because of the legendary efforts of Mr. Smith, his Buildings and Grounds crew, and the entire Hackley community. Mr. Morales and his kitchen staff grew into the sustainable elite, composting all food scraps from Hackley’s dining program, including meat, and expanding Hackley’s menu to include more local and organic food items.

Mrs. Erickson, the school’s horticulturist, led many organic gardening and planting projects throughout the year, linking the Upper and Lower Schools.

Yet all throughout the year, the most crucial element remained; the vision for the environmental movement at Hackley grew from the students. It was their voice and passion that propelled the team’s accomplishments. The most exemplary case of this was at Power Shift 2009 in Washington D.C., an environmental and climate change conference that empowered twelve students and three faculty to take action both on a local and national level for a more sustainable and just world. We learned a plethora of skills, such

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Earth Day Celebrations 2009

“ A small group of thoughtful people could change the world.

Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” –margaret mead

as lobbying in Congress, a skill we learned by doing, that will without a doubt be assets for HEAL in the future. We learned similar information and skills at the local Bedford Environmental Summit. Many of the students in HEAL expressed the larger implications of our work both locally and globally, such as saving money, improving health, and increasing the standard of living for many people across the world with fewer rights than we enjoy. Again, the students were the stars of Earth Week, April 20th-24th, organizing many events and projects to engage, educate, and empower the community to solve environmental problems by taking action, even just in their daily lives. Their voices ring clear in their articles for the Dial and other Hackley publications. This group of

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students is truly talented, a force to be reckoned with, and will undoubtedly continue to change the way we think about our role in both the natural world and the larger global community.

If this year can give any insight into what the future holds, it would signify that Hackley is on a bright path towards a sustainability that unites the entire community towards this goal.

–Amanda Cooke ’09 Amanda Cooke received The Royal A. Clark Memorial Award, for loyalty demonstrated through service, at Commencement 2009

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