SHAKER HEIGHTS, Ohio — Climate change tops the list of concerns among high school students, according to Laurel School in Shaker Heights. So they decided to act, creating a 15-week Environmental Justice Semester open to all students in Northeast Ohio.
"We are really excited to have the only program focused on environmental justice for girls in the United States," Head of Laurel School Ann Klotz says.
This semester, 11 students explored an aspect that caught their interest.
"I want them to take the skills and the competences that they have learned in this semester and take it forward for the rest of their lives," Klotz explained.
This group of change markers did a lot, as they told friends and family at the end of the semester. They even traveled to the Ohio Statehouse to speak with lawmakers.
"My group got to speak with Sen. Kent Smith," Ivey Williams, a junior at Laurel, said about meeting the Euclid Democrat.
Ivey is opposed to House Bill 102, which would prevent state agencies from adopting California's vehicle emission standards. Williams and her classmates started a petition on Change.org, and saw an op-ed they wrote published in The Plain Dealer.
"Since getting it published, our signatures kind of skyrocketed really quickly," Williams told 3News. "So that was really exciting to know that people were actually out there reading our work."
The students bonded over their shared interest.
"They needed to create a close community and to have the opportunity to do interdisciplinary learning that is focused in the real world," Angela Yeager, director of the Laurel School Environmental Justice Semester, said. "It's project-based and it is aligned with community partner organizations."
Concerned Citizens Against Lead, or C.C.O.A.L., was one of three community partners. C.C.O.A.L. is a grassroots effort to educate and connect to people to recourses concerning the lead poisoning.
"So C.C.O.A.L. definitely taught me a lot about understanding how I can make a positive impact on a whole organization and possibly a community outside beyond that in Cleveland," Laurel junior McKealy Kemock recalled.
Laurel is working to expand enrollment in the Environmental Justice Semester, but now it is time to celebrate the achievements of the first stretch of this program.
"I am so proud," Klotz said. "I am practically tingling because these young women are going to change the world."
The students are continuing the work in environmental justice by organizing a Northeast Ohio Youth Climate Summit for middle and high school students on April 14 at the Think[box] at Case Western Reserve University.