Since 2009, New York City has been the only major municipality in the country to require each of its public schools to appoint a sustainability coordinator – part of the city’s broader sustainability plan to send zero waste to landfills by the year 2030. In a city of 1.1 million students and more than 1,700 public schools “that gives you a huge team of change agents who potentially can work miracles across the five boroughs,” says Teachers College’s Oren Pizmony-Levy, Assistant Professor of International and Comparative Education.
But are the school coordinators making any impact – and if so, what kind? No one has been able to say for sure, because the coordinator role is to some extent open to interpretation by the teacher or staff member who is appointed or takes it on at each school. And while the New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE) has been collecting data about the coordinators, it lacks the expertise and capacity to analyze that data.