Collaborative Announces Green Schools Design and Building Conference

For immediate release
Please contact: Ariel Dekovic, 415-970-6604, ariel@chps.net

May 21, 2007 (San Francisco, CA) -The Collaborative for High Performance Schools, Inc. (CHPS) is holding the Greentools for Healthy Schools Conference and Exposition on September 27, 2007 in San Francisco. The conference will bring together experts in green, healthy school design, construction and maintenance for a day of workshops, featured speakers, awards and exhibitions. Greentools for Healthy Schools aims to make high performance schools a feasible, affordable reality for school districts across the nation.

“We think the high performance school community has been ready for an event like this for a long time, and we are proud to be able to offer our experience as a green building rating program to school districts across the country,” said CHPS Executive Director Charles Eley.

The conference will offer a green products and services exhibition, which has already completely sold out, and the CHPS Green Apple Awards, which will honor outstanding high performance school projects and design teams.

Choosing the city for the first Greentools conference wasn’t difficult. "Greentools for Healthy Schools fits right in with Green Building Week in San Francisco, which happens the week before and is a weeklong, city-wide celebration of the opportunities to green our city,” said Mark Palmer, Municipal Green Building Coordinator at San Francisco’s Department of Environment. “We think the Greentools conference is a great opportunity to highlight what our schools can do to integrate the built environment with natural systems. Our students deserve healthy, energy efficient and productive places for learning and study.” The City of San Francisco’s environmental department, SF Environment, will partner for the conference.

The conference will feature multi-speaker workshops on a wide range of topics, including strategies on how to exceed the state’s energy standards (Title 24), smart use of daylight in schools to improve student productivity and comfort, integration of green design principles throughout the design and construction process and children’s health issues in indoor environments.

CHPS is the nation’s first green building rating program developed especially for schoollearning environments. Twenty CHPS-Designed schools have already opened their doors, and over a hundred more are on the way. These schools are environmentally sustainable and healthy places of learning that demonstrate that while high performance technologies may be new, they need not be complicated, expensive or unreliable. CHPS schools save school districts money through energy and water utility savings and by increasing occupant health and productivity.

For more information on Greentools for Healthy Schools, visit www.chps.net/greentools.htm.