Green Ribbon Schools
- Are you recycling, composting, or conserving energy in your school?
- Are you concerned about indoor air quality, improving nutrition, and the overall health of students and staff?
- Are you developing and utilizing outdoor classrooms in your school?
If the answer is, “YES”, then you should apply for the 2021 Green Ribbon Schools award. ED-GRS recognizes schools taking a comprehensive approach to greening their school, incorporating environmental learning with improving environmental and health impacts.
Public and private schools may apply!
2020-2021 Nebraska ED-GRS Cycle
The 2020-2021 Applications are now closed. Honorees will be announced at the end of April.
2021-2022 Nebraska ED-GRS Cycle
The U.S. Department of Education Green Ribbon Schools (ED-GRS) program will continue its 11th cycle of awards for 2021-2022. Applications for the 2021-2022 cycle will open in June.
Ed-GRS FAQs
This recognition award, which is intended to highlight and share promising practices, is non-renewable. After your practices have been recognized and highlighted, we want to share the work of other schools, districts, and post-secondary institutions. ED-GRS is not a certification, tracking, or rating program. For this reason, each entity is only eligible once and the award is granted for one year only. This is why the award title must always be stated with the year in which it was selected. There are, however, many annual benchmarking programs on the ED-GRS Green Strides page that you may find helpful in tracking your continued progress. For the same reason, schools within districts that have already been recognized for this work district-wide, should document progress for every school in the district beyond that which the district has already been honored .
In the Highlights from the 2019 Honorees Report, you can find examples of innovative practices in every Pillar from the 2019 cohort of honorees. Feel free to connect with other honorees. You can also find summaries of 2012-2019 honorees on the same page and view them on a map.
You can find additional resources and webinars on Green Strides to support your efforts and those of the other schools with which you work. We particularly encourage you to consult the Green Strides Webinar Series, with offerings weekly. Be sure to stay up to date by signing up for the latest in green schools news, resources and opportunities with the USDE’s Green Ribbon Schools newsletter.
Public Information and Education Mini-Grant Awards (PIE Grants) are a potential funding source for initiatives fitting the Nebraska Environmental Trust Board Funding Categories in habitat, surface and ground water, waste management, air quality, and soil management.