Piedmont Connect PHS Green Club Grant - Bee-Friendly Flower Project
A Piedmont Connect matching grant helped the PHS Green Club launch their “Bee-Friendly Flower (BFF) Project,” an ambitious plan to install bee-friendly plants in concrete-lined boxes that extend along the walls and walkways of the library and the student center. The planting started April 29, 2023 and will be a mix of native flowers that are low maintenance and low water use.
PUSD is providing the project’s infrastructure allowing the BFF Project to remove the old landscaping, add new soil amendment and install new irrigation where it’s needed. The Green Club currently consists of 45 students and has 20 active members, who meet every week to discuss projects and potential volunteer activities, both within and outside Piedmont. READ MORE
Piedmont Connect Climate Change Education Grant
A Piedmont Connect education grant will send Piedmont School teachers to Climate Generation’s Summer Institute for Climate Change Education. Educators from across the country will gather regionally for an impactful three-day online training. Teachers from all backgrounds and subject areas will attend and learn new tools, skills, and resources to teach climate change in science, social studies, ELA, environmental studies, geography, art, math, health, and more.
The California regional cohort will be co-led by Dr. Kelley Le, Director of the UC Irvine Science Project and author of Teaching Climate Change for Grades 6–12: Empowering Science Teachers to Take on the Climate Crisis Through NGSS.
Piedmont Connect Students for Solar Challenge Grant
Jumpstarted by a $17K challenge grant raised by Piedmont Connect and a $25K contribution from the PUSD’s Board of Trustees, the Piedmont & Millennium High Schools’ Green Club initiated a $400,000 fundraising campaign in September 2020 called Students for Solar. The student campaign was created to fill “value-engineering” cuts made by the School District when it chose to eliminate funding for the solar panels needed to make the new $66M Piedmont High School STEAM building and performing arts facility Zero Net Energy as they were designed and anticipated to be.
The student campaign kicked-off in February 2021 with educational talks by three Piedmonters who are subject-area experts. These illuminating talks were interspersed with riveting live donation segments, coached live-auction-style by Green Club member, Lucca Carr-Veramo. This successful event was followed by a virtual silent auction in May/June 2021. In the 2020-21 academic year, Students for Solar raised over $58K.
Piedmont Connect Readmont Grant
2021’s Readmont was funded by a generous grant from Piedmont Connect, with collaborations between Piedmont Unified School District, Piedmont schools English, Social Science and Science Departments, and the PMS and PHS Green Clubs.
Connect’s grant also purchased 50 copies of Naomi Kleins’s This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs The Climate and sponsored three months of events:
Embracing Clean Energy Panel Discussion: Angel Fierro, Plexus Solutions LLC; Jessica Tovar, Local Clean Energy Alliance; Dr. Max Auffhammer, George Pardee Jr., International Sustainable Development Department, UC Berkeley.
Three (3) lunch time discussion sessions open to students and the community. Led by Beth Black, PHS English Department Chair.
How to Change Everything: A Youth Climate Justice Congregation. Naomi Klein spoke with our local students!
Piedmont Connect & Piedmont High School Build Climate Clock
Piedmont Connect and Piedmont High School’s highest-level Robotics Team, FRC (part of Piedmont Makers) collaborated to build a Climate Clock, as part of a worldwide initiative to educate the public about the amount of carbon emissions we can still safely emit and stay below the UN IPCC’s target of limiting global average temperature increase to 1.5C. The first monumental Climate Clock was installed in Manhattan’s Union Square in September 2020. Piedmont’s Climate Clock is scaled to Piedmont’s size but we hope it will educate residents and visitors about the truly urgent need to stop polluting by burning methane (the true name for “natural” gas) in buildings and driving gas-powered cars.
Testing a 2-panel Climate Clock in the workshop: Top number= Years, months, days, hours, minutes and seconds remaining before we emit the total allowable carbon emissions to remain below 1.5C. Bottom number: Tons of emissions remaining in our global carbon “budget”.
Piedmont Connect Board member, Hope Salzer, displays the 3-panel Climate Clock configuration which indicates our Emissions Deadline— the remaining years, days, hours, minutes and seconds before we burn all the carbon we can in order to stay under the UN IPCC’s recommended maximum of 1.5C global average temperature rise— as well as our Global Lifeline— the percentage of global energy provided by clean, renewable energy. As the Lifeline increases, our deadline will extend…. phew!