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Miami, Chicagoland, San Francisco Schools Win Green Makeovers

The inaugural winners of the CBS and EcoZone Green Schools Initiative contest are Miami Northwestern Senior High School, Everett M. Dirksen Middle School in Calumet City, Illinois, and Rosa Parks Elementary School in San Francisco.

The inaugural winners of the CBS and EcoZone Green Schools Initiative contest are Miami Northwestern Senior High School, Everett M. Dirksen Middle School in Calumet City, Illinois, and Rosa Parks Elementary School in San Francisco.

The CBS Corporation and EcoMedia recently announced the full complement of winners of the "Green My School" contest they launched in the three cities last October.

The Rosa Parks Elementary School was declared the winner of a green makeover worth $250,000 in January. The sponsoring groups have since selected Miami Northwestern Senior High School for a makeover also valued at $250,000 and Dirksen Middle School for a makeover worth more than $100,000.

The makeovers can include energy efficiency retrofits, use of renewables or installation of equipment to generate renewable energy and other upgrades subject to local school board approval.

Public schools in each of the metro areas competed for the makeover by submitting entries that answered this question: "What does it mean to be green?" The winning schools submitted collective responses in a number of media. Their entries not only told of students' ideas about being green, they also showed what the students are doing to make their campuses more environmentally friendly. Some recycle, some tend urban gardens, others compost. The San Francisco school, for example, does all three and included a video of its efforts in its entry.

The winners were selected by a committee that drew from EcoMedia's Advisory Board. The committee included representatives of the U.S. Green Building Council, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Environmental Protection Agency and its Energy Star program, Waterkeeper Alliance, city and school officials, corporate sponsors and members of the CBS Corporation.

Image by SXC user woodsy. 

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