A Collaboration Worth Copying

Last summer, students, parents, teachers and community members gathered at Broadous Elementary School to plant a pair of crape myrtles, the first of 250 trees planned for the Pacoima campus. More than a beautification project, the tree planting marked the beginning of an ambitiously simple effort to cool the school, lower its energy costs and solve its chronic flooding problem.

For a district desperately in need of new schools, the Broadous Elementary plan is an energy-efficient design worth copying. It’s also an example of how the beleaguered Los Angeles Unified School District can benefit from a unique collaboration between public institutions and nonprofit groups.

Broadous Elementary is one of 40 LAUSD campuses selected by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power for its “Cool Schools” program. DWP provides funding for trees to shade playgrounds and buildings, thereby reducing the need for air-conditioning.

Cool Schools is a joint project with the nonprofit group TreePeople, which has planted more than 1.5 million trees throughout Los Angeles and is helping “green” 400 LAUSD campuses by replacing asphalt with trees and grass.

But cooling the school is only a part of what’s planned for Broadous Elementary.

During the winter rainy season, parents often keep their children home because the campus floods so badly. Strategically planted trees would help control the problem. But TreePeople founder Andy Lipkis saw the opportunity to do even more.

Working with other nonprofit groups such as Pacoima Beautiful and with schoolchildren, parents and community members, TreePeople designed a swale, a broad depression that would run through the campus, collect water and transport it to a new soccer field. An infiltrator device beneath the soccer field would speed absorption into the ground-water table.

The plan would solve the school’s flooding problem and bring Los Angeles--at least this tiny portion of it--one step closer to TreePeople’s dream of making the city a sustainable ecosystem with dramatically reduced flooding, drought and pollution.

Best of all, in Lipkis’ view, involving the school’s children in the plan would teach them about their role in the ecosystem and their power to make a difference.

Lipkis not only dreams big dreams but makes them happen--as proven by TreePeople’s 27-year history--in large part by bringing together a coalition of funders and volunteers. For the Broadous Elementary project, the DWP grant paid for the planning and will pay for the trees and the special water conservation features. Volunteers from the L.A. Conservation Corps and Pacoima Beautiful organized community plantings. Major work will be done while the campus is torn up anyway, undergoing repairs and improvements such as adding the new soccer fields paid for by Proposition BB funds, the $2.4-billion bond measure approved by voters in 1987 to renovate schools.

The LAUSD can’t afford not to take advantage of this kind of coalition. Yes, bringing these players together took time and effort. The payoff in energy savings will come later. The payoff now is greater community involvement and support--an immeasurable benefit to a district too often at odds with its neighbors.

Other groups considering partnering with the LAUSD will be watching to see how--and whether--projects like this one succeed.