About Patterson Park Public Charter School:
The mission of Patterson Park Public Charter School is to develop well educated, community-minded children by providing high-quality, community-based education that capitalizes on the diversity of nearby neighborhoods and uses the resources of Patterson Park. The school culture is based on students, staff, and parents functioning, seeing themselves, and behaving as one community.
Narrative:
Patterson Park Public Charter School started as an idea more than ten years ago, conceived of by a group of concerned people who wanted a school that would be an integral part of their community. The founders’ vision was to bring together the resources of the community, the park, and families to educate the whole child.
Three years later, in the former St. Elizabeth’s Catholic School building, we started the process of building our school.
Right from the start, our Board decided to do everything we could to encourage our students to be stewards of the
community. One way to do this was to become energy-efficient and eco-friendly in our building. We replaced windows, changed flooring, used earth-friendly cleaning products and set up a small recycling program.
Another key element of stewardship at PPPCS is service learning. Our students and teachers devote two days a year to the community, one in the spring and one in the fall. On service learning days, each class of PPPCS performs a service learning project around the Patterson Park area. Most of the projects move the students out of the school building—into the park for clean ups and tree-planting or into the surrounding neighborhoods to give away flowers
started in the classroom, label storm drains, or spread the word to neighbors about important community initiatives.
Now in our eighth year, our school continues to increase its commitment to being green. We extended recycling into every classroom in 2009, with the recycling bins picked up every day by our custodial staff and brought to the recycling center. We streamlined our recycling process in 2012 by switching to a recycling dumpster that gets picked
up twice a week. This year, we have added recycling cans to every hallway on every floor of what is now a
campus of three buildings.
In 2011 our relationship with the Baltimore Energy Challenge commenced. They were able to bring the awareness of energy consumption to all of our students and staff by presenting at our professional developments, hosting assemblies, and working weekly with a group of concerned middle-school students that we labeled our ‘green team’. Working with the Baltimore Energy Challenge, the Green Team developed an energy audit, conducted it throughout the school, and made recommendations to our facilities manager for changes that would save energy and money at our school. The Green Team even wrote, acted, and filmed a movie about conserving energy to show the rest of the school as a kick-off for a three-month contest to see which classroom could save the most energy.
PPPCS is excited about the possibility of being recognized as a Green School of Maryland. Our students are eager to continue the work of making our school greener. Our teachers, staff, and board of directors are committed to educating students about the environment and their role in being good stewards. This whole process has been an amazing experience for the entire PPPCS community and brought us even closer to meeting our goal but also to increasing the awareness to others around us.
Top 5 Accomplishments:
1. New Middle School Building
Patterson Park Public Charter School built a new middle school structure that was designed with multiple Energy Conservation Measures (ECMs) in place.
2. Service Learning Days
Twice a year, once in the fall and once in the spring, every one of our students and teachers participate in a service learning project for the day. All of our projects involve the community and we do our very best to enrich the community around us. Some service projects include: cleaning up the Boat Lake, picking up trash, making recycling signs, painting storm drains and many more. Our teachers use the day as a teaching enrichment activity. Teachers, along with student input, start with lessons and then move to the actual application. Our students really look forward to these days!
3. Committment to Recycling
As a school, we take recycling very seriously. We recycle all paper and all forms of containers. There is a paper recycling bin in every classroom and several container recycling cans throughout the building. We pay for our own recycling as a school and it is picked up twice a week. We are looking for potential fundraisers to purchase a thermocompactor for our styrofoam trays. We conduct lessons on reducing our carbon footprint throughout the school year with all grade levels.
4. Creation of a "Green Team"
In the 2011-2012 school year, we formed a 'Green Team' out of 6th grade students. These students met weekly with the SEEK teacher and Reading Specialist and members of the BEC(Baltimore Energy Challenge). The students investigated our energy use by month, by classroom, and even conducted a contest to see which classrooms were saving the most energy! This year, we have expanded our Green Team. Middle school students signed up for the elective and are meeting once a week with members of the BEC and architects from Terra Logos. This year they have already filmed a PSA to show all of our students, acted in our assembly for Cool the Earth, collected coupons for the Cool the Earth program. The next steps are to conduct another energy audit, start the energy contest, design a energy saving house on the mini ipads. Here is a link to the PSA that the Green Team made last year.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3Jrt9ECXJk
5. Creation of an Outdoor Terrace and Greenhouse for Environmental Education
Patterson Park Public Charter School has a newly installed greenhouse on a 4th floor terrace that is used for environmental education. The terrace has an outdoor classroom with seating for 28 students, a potting bench, and four water collection barrels.