Building Roadmaps for Healthy Schools: The Funding Gap and What We Can Do About It

This week, we sit down with Lisa Greenfield, Regional Programme Manager for the Midwest at the Centre for Green Schools at the US Green Building Council, to explore a question that fundamentally challenges how we think about educational environments: What if the single biggest barrier to transforming school air quality isn't our lack of scientific knowledge or technology—but our complete failure to recognise that schools need practical roadmaps, peer networks, and trusted voices who've walked the path before to turn good intentions into real world action?

Coming from a family of educators and having spent almost 20 years in the classroom herself, Lisa brings a deeply personal perspective to this work. After developing allergic asthma from mold exposure in her own classroom, and later experiencing long COVID that kept her out of teaching for three months, she left the profession to make a bigger impact. Now she's building the infrastructure to help hundreds of school districts across the United States navigate the complex journey toward healthier indoor environments.

Key Topics Discussed:

The Fellowship Network: The Centre for Green Schools is launching its largest cohort yet, bringing on 53 fellows from public school districts across the country. These aren't consultants or outside experts. They're facilities managers, finance directors, operations staff, and district leaders who will learn together, implement the Energy Efficiency Indoor Air Quality Toolkit, and become mentors for the next wave. The goal is simple. Build a peer network where schools that have already navigated this journey can guide those just starting out. Because nobody wants to reinvent the wheel. They just need someone to hold their hand and show them what good looks like.

The Stakeholder Ecosystem: Improving school air quality requires buy in from decision makers like superintendents and school boards, implementers like facilities managers, the teachers and staff who work in those buildings every day, the students who spend up to 10 hours breathing that air, and the parents who can become powerful advocates. Each group sees the problem through a different lens. But when you frame it properly, fiscal savings from reduced absenteeism, lower health insurance premiums, improved test scores, better teacher retention, the case becomes compelling across every stakeholder group.

Schools as Workplaces: We often talk about children in schools, but teachers spend entire careers in these buildings. One in 13 students has asthma. But teachers are the ones who may develop COPD, allergic asthma, or long term respiratory illness from decades of exposure. Lisa's story is not uncommon. Too many educators have gotten sick from mold, poor ventilation, or chronic pathogen exposure. These are workplaces. Employers have a responsibility to provide safe environments. Yet air quality is rarely treated with the same urgency as fire safety, water quality, or food standards.

The Funding Reality: American schools face a $90 billion annual funding gap. They are the second largest infrastructure in the nation after roads and highways. Most school funding comes from local real estate taxes, which creates massive inequity. Title I schools, rural districts, and tribal schools often lack the resources for preventative maintenance, let alone major HVAC upgrades. But here's the thing. You don't need to overhaul an entire system on day one. Start with ventilation and filtration. Measure what's happening. Make small changes. Be transparent. Show progress. The roadmap exists. The toolkit is free. The support network is being built. Funding often follows when expectations are set and schools demonstrate genuine effort.

GUEST:

Lisa Greenfield

Regional Programme Manager, Centre for Green Schools, US Green Building Council

https://centerforgreenschools.org/

The Air Quality Matters Podcast in Partnership with