2022 JC School Distric Map - Green Spaces & Environmental Health

This map was a result of a district wide survey SJC did in collaboration with the JC Board of Ed, asking Principals about the need for Trees at their schools and whether their schools were experiencing Flooding - we mapped the results, and also included information about Air Quality issues, along with Green Spaces like Parks and Community Gardens that could serve as Outdoor Classrooms nearby to a school location.
This mapping effort kicked of SJC’s Green Corridors Program, with the goal to prioritize Street Tree Planting efforts in partnership with the City of Jersey City’s Sustainability Office & DPW Division of Forestry starting in the Spring 2023.
SJC’s Green Corridors Program seeks to connect Schools to Green Spaces via STREET TREE CORRIDORS to form connectivity opportunities and fill in missing Tree Inventory locations with this strategy in mind.

Check out our Jersey City Schools Map below, showing JC Public Schools and nearby Parks and Community Gardens - hover your mouse over locations for details. CLICK HERE TO SHARE MAP LINK.

And click here to view Schools by Ward / Neighborhood and results of the survey.

2021 News - SJC Partners with Solar Landscape For Statewide Scholarship

Solar Landscape and Sustainable Jersey City Partner to Award $20,000 in Community Sustainability Challenge Scholarships — Insider NJ

One of the goals of SJC's Sustainable Schools initiative, is to get more parents and community members involved in school sustainability projects. SJC is particularly interested to support community initiatives that integrate eco-literacy opportunities for both adults and kids!

Sustainable Jersey City is supporting the roll-out of the Sustainable Jersey For Schools (SJ4S) statewide certification program by partnering with JC School District Champions to plan, design and help fund demonstration projects at our schools, and in surrounding neighborhoods. If you would like to work with SJC on school district projects, please fill out our Welcome Survey and let us know more about you! This includes Teachers, Parents and others seeking to work with students to expand sustainability activities in Jersey City.

Jersey City has a number of registered schools:

Dr. Michael Conti No. 5 Elementary School
Innovation High School
James J. Ferris High School
Joseph H. Brensinger No. 17 Elementary School
Nicolaus Copernicus No. 25 Elementary School
Number 8 Elementary School
Patricia M. Noonan No. 26 Elementary School
The Renaissance Institute

Full List of Registered Sustainable Jersey Schools

We encourage individual schools to register for the National Wildlife Federation Eco Schools USA Program, administered by NJ Audubon / Eco Schools for New Jersey. This program is FREE and provides Learning Pathways, tools and a support system that can help school green teams achieve points and awards under the SJ4S Program.

See NWF Eco Schools in Jersey City

AND, one of the things SJC supports is an expanded opportunity to integrate the ARTS into traditional STEM curriculums - STEM +ART = STEAM. Here is a great example of a project developed by

Kaycie D. on her animation of the Periodic Table of Elements with female characters, BRAVA!

All of the member educators behind SJC's Sustainable Schools initiative have gone through some training with the NJ Learns program offered by The Cloud Institute, another of SJC's partners.

Lastly, SJC is making our charitable donations ioby crowd funding platform available to Jersey City school project teams, which will help bring resources to these efforts, aiming to broadly replicate the PS #5 and Frogs Are Green ioby crowdsourcing success stories here.

Check out the additional resources available on our RESOURCES page under School District Sustainability Initiatives.

Honeywell - Eco System Education

In 2015 the Jersey City School District was the focus of The Honeywell Institute for Eco System Education with NJ Audubon delivered an amazing EfS (Educating for Sustainability / Cloud Institute for Sustainability Education) program and SJC was very pleased to participate !

Past Programs

In 2015, two programs were piloted in the Jersey City School District:

Empower Design focused on implementing programs that teach students and local professionals to design and build renewable energy devices to sell to their communities. "Our ultimate motivation is the creation of local sustainable microgrids providing reliable, flexible, and maintainable electricity systems to communities that today have little or no access."

Fabulous video here about Empower Energy Design project based physics pilot which kicked off at Ferris HS in Sept 2015 and is sill going strong, now having moved to Dickinson HS.

Permaculture For Kids was an initiative for school children that explored the principles of permaculture and the 'wholistic design process'. For example, students were taught to connect many different natural elements and bring them together to create an effective school garden design. However, that program initiative was much more than the design of a garden - using a systems thinking approach, it sought to show children the connections between the natural world and their daily lives, including how to recycle food scraps to grow healthy soil. Students grew to understand that the most healthy solutions for people come from nurturing and giving back to the environment. Thanks Monica & Rachel of BOD for spearheading this !

What is Permaculture ? (we like this definition and are a fan of Claudia Joseph, the Environmental Educator behind the New York Permaculture Exchange !)

SJC would love to see something like Beyond Organic Design’s Urban Design Sustainability Program launched in Jersey City! The program empowers students to create environmental and resilience responses. Its approach is based on permaculture design, a philosophy and an interdisciplinary design science modeled after patterns found in nature. Students learn how to reframe urban environmental and social challenges through systems thinking, focusing on how different components are interconnected.

SJC is also a big fan of Frogs Are Green!

Frogs and amphibians are on the decline around the world due to deforestation, habitat loss, climate change, disease, pesticides and other problems. Our mission is to educate the public through awareness about these issues and bring them into the equation by giving students the opportunity to share their own ideas and experiences. Frogs Are Green hosts annual contests for children’s art and photography AND has written a new six-week curriculum combining the study of amphibians and the natural world. Paired with art expression projects for K-3, and partners with galleries for Spring (Earth Day) exhibitions, the intent is to reach the broader community about important environmental concerns. Thanks Susan for landing this wonderful GLOCAL project in JC !

Partnerships

SJC is excited to work with Eco Schools USA / NJ Audubon to support the JC School District ramp up its sustainability initiatives, using The Cloud Institute's EfS framework for project based learning.

Part of SJC's support system includes our partnership with crowdfunding site ioby.org - check our Campaigns page here.