Redmond High a finalist for "greenest" school in U.S.

Redmond High School already has more green mojo than you can shake a solar panel at: regional recognition for starting the Cool Schools carbon-cutting project, a President's Environmental Youth award, an invitation to the White House last year to celebrate the school's accomplishments.

But, could Redmond High be America's greenest school?

By one measure, it's right up there.

The school is one of 10 finalists in a national green school competition sponsored by Illinois-based IC Bus, the largest school-bus manufacturer in the U.S. An online contest will help decide the winning school, which gets a plug-in hybrid school bus worth $200,000.

Senior Hilary Polis, 18, wrote the essay that put Redmond High into the top 10, out of nearly 2,000 entries. She and her classmates have found that making your school greener means taking matters into your own hands, exerting a little peer pressure, offering rewards and getting really good at turning off the lights.

For example, students involved in Go GREEN — the word "green" is an acronym for "Greater Redmond Environmental Education Network" — realized that when the gray light of winter is replaced by sunnier spring days, window light is all that's needed to illuminate many parts of the school. So students go through the building throughout the day, snapping off unneeded lights.

Some lights couldn't be turned off — they were on automatic timers. The students brought their concerns to the Lake Washington School District, and found a way to override the system.

The school had a compost program for lunch leftovers, but getting their peers to sort compostable materials from their lunch trays was no easy job. The Go GREEN team found if they manned the compost bins and called attention to classmates who weren't following the disposal rules, most kids would cooperate.

The Go GREEN team has helped expand composting and recycling efforts to more than a dozen schools around the area, by going to neighborhood schools and teaching students there how to sort lunch scraps and recyclables.

"That saves the school district, and saves each school, money," said Go GREEN member Nolan Thomas, 18, a senior.

The green team boosted bus ridership at the school by 10 percent with a student raffle, offering incentives for people who rode the bus most often. It also encouraged teachers to car pool by talking up R-TRIP, a Redmond-based partnership with Redmond, King County and other government agencies that offer incentives for car pooling, using transit, walking or riding a bike to work.

All these efforts built upon the work Redmond students started in 2007 with the Cool Schools Challenge, a program that measures a school's carbon footprint. The program trains students to do energy audits and shows teachers simple things they can do in class to reduce greenhouse gases, like turning down the thermostat and using both sides of sheets of paper. That program has expanded to 40 schools in the region, with help of the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency and Puget Sound Energy.

For Go GREEN members, the group was a logical follow-up to teacher Mike Town's popular Advanced Placement class in environmental science, which is taken by more than half of the student body.

"You learn about all the problems, and then you need to do something," said Polis. If the school wins, in addition to the school getting the hybrid bus, she'll receive a $5,000 scholarship.

For the Greenest Schools contest, a green-guide author and representatives from IC Bus narrowed the field to 10 finalists, basing selections on an overall commitment to going green, said Dena Leuchter, IC spokeswoman. The Web page that's tallying votes shows each essay submitted; it requires a login and only allows users to vote once a day. So far, about 10,000 people have voted each day, she said.

IC Bus has sold just 26 plug-in hybrid buses to school districts in the U.S. One of the very first plug-in hybrids was sold to the Lake Chelan School District, and the South Whidbey district is getting one in a few months.

Redmond students are keeping their fingers crossed that they'll win the prize.

" 'America's greenest school' has a nice ring to it," said senior Jimmy Brookman, 18.

Katherine Long: 206-464-2219 or klong@seattletimes.com