Opinion: A school in the woods is a win for kids

Participants look over maps on the trails behind Millbrook and Broken Ground schools as they look over the site for the middle school proposal on Saturday, September 28, 2024.

Participants look over maps on the trails behind Millbrook and Broken Ground schools as they look over the site for the middle school proposal on Saturday, September 28, 2024.

By NICK BABLADELIS

Published: 10-31-2024 6:00 AM

Nick Babladelis is a Concord public school parent and sustainability educator.

There is one key fact that is being crowded out in the conversation regarding the new middle school project and the proposed amendments to the Concord School Board charter: our community, our children, desperately need a new middle school, not only to provide for 21st-century educational excellence, health, and safety, but also to take necessary and urgent climate action.

The new middle school project the district is pursuing is a big win for sustainability. Enabled by the land and resources at Broken Ground, it will give generations of middle school students in Concord, regardless of their address or means, regular and easy access to the health, wellness, and educational benefits of being in and near a forest, all while removing the equivalent of 20 homes worth of carbon emissions on net.

As a parent of two Concord public school students and a sustainability educator, I have engaged with interest in the thorough, multi-year conversation around the new middle school project with a keen eye for how this project could be an opportunity for holistic, long-term sustainability and climate action.

After the Broken Ground site was selected, I continued to be concerned about how the project could be as sustainable as possible. So, I have worked with other community members on the middle school sustainability subcommittee to realize something great for our community. This group includes foresters, educators, architects, farmers, students, board members, and climate champions of all stripes. Like many of us in this community, it’s a group of engaged parents and community members who are focused on moving forward with solutions.

Now when it comes to the sustainability of the project, let me name the elephant in the new middle school (as it were): about 22 acres of forest land will be cleared at Broken Ground, leaving nearly 150 acres, most of which is conserved. Let’s put the scale of this impact in perspective: it has roughly the same carbon emissions as adding three, just three, homes to Concord’s housing stock.

Are the benefits worth this cost? Yes! For this small carbon cost, we will provide the opportunity for every Concord public middle school student to have regular and meaningful exposure to one of New Hampshire’s greatest environmental assets: forest. Time in and around forests can improve self-esteem and happiness, lower anxiety, and generate more optimism about the future (check out “Nature Fix” by Florence Williams for even more on the science).

These benefits are especially strong for kids and preteens, the exact population this “school in the woods” will benefit. This makes the Broken Ground site for the new middle school a huge educational and social-emotional win for generations of children in our community and one we aren’t considering enough.

Rebuilding at Rundlett can’t match this opportunity, not even close. And it’s not just in terms of environmental learning and student health that this project wins. There are other ways the current Rundlett site limits what we can do as a community on climate action.

Consider the emissions from the current Rundlett Middle School, a building built in 1957 in a dramatically different energy landscape. Last school year the carbon emissions from energy use at Rundlett were equal to nearly 26 Concord homes. It would take nearly 240 acres of forested land to offset the current site, far beyond the roughly 50 acres the district currently owns at Broken Ground.

Thanks to the space available at Broken Ground, the new school will be able to provide the lowest lifetime cost solution for heating and cooling through high-efficiency geothermal heat pumps. Coupled with other solutions like solar these carbon reductions dwarf any changes in the transportation emissions. On net, on-site emissions from the new school would go from 26 homes today to zero.