Five gifted students from the There’s No Zone Like the Ozone class at the Center for Creative Learning met with the Board of Education on Oct. 4 to propose a policy that would restrict car and bus idling in front of district buildings.
Janet Strate, president of the Board of Education, said the students, fifth graders Danielle Essman, Zak Mitra, Brayden Haas, Rachel Heinzerling, and A. J. Ohley, wanted the board to consider the negative effects idling can have on the air quality around school buildings and in the community.
“Right now we are looking at whether we can legally make this into a policy,” Strate said, “We are having our lawyers review it and asking our administrators to look at whether it is realistic to ask parents to turn their cars off.”
The students wrote guidelines for a policy that administrators and legal counsel are currently using to create a first draft. The draft will be presented to the board on November fifteenth and the board will vote on a final policy December sixth.
Kathy Nuetzel, teacher of There’s No Zone Like the Ozone at CCL, said the project originated more than a year and a half ago with a meeting with Susannah Fusch, St. Louis Clean Air Partnership Spokesperson, who suggested the class focus on reducing idling to promote clean air in the region.
First Student’s five-minute limit on idling for its drivers didn’t match a county ordinance that limited idling to three minutes. Nuetzel said the realization that people didn’t know about the county ordinance made them want to spread awareness.
The class put up signs and worked with parents and bus drivers to try to reduce idling around the campus.
“With the first semester of doing our campaign here at the CCL, we recognized that we could have a bigger impact district-wide,” Nuetzel said. “You always want to start small to try out your campaign, learn from it, and then take it to the next school.”
What started as three students expanded to 21 as the project spread across multiple classes.
“The main idea is that the students are trying to change behavior,” Nuetzel said, “It’s not a matter of whether they want to catch people idling and try to impose a consequence. It’s just like seatbelts; we want to change behaviors.”
Heinzerling, Essman, and Ohley said they wanted to educate people about idling in order to make the air cleaner around schools and in the community.
“I want the policy to let people know what’s going on,” Heinzerling said. “People may not know what is wrong with keeping their car on when they are waiting for their kid in the parent pick up line, but it’s just like recycling. Once people knew about recycling, they recycled all the time.”
Essman said she also wants her voice to be heard and to show people that they can make a difference.
“To quote Dr. Seuss,” she said, “‘Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot nothing is going to get better, it’s not.’”
Right now, the students are waiting to hear back from the board.
“It’ll only get worse if we just stand there and let people idle without knowing how bad it really is,” Ohley said. “The county ordinance is three minutes and most people idle for much much longer.”
Ed Shouse, science teacher, said engines release carbon dioxide and other incombustible particulates that pollute the air. These emissions are broken down and recombine to create ozone or O3.
“Ozone pollution is a serious problem and part of it is from the emissions that come out of the car,” Shouse said. “The car’s not giving off ozone but in the summer with all the traffic the gasses that are released get broken up by UV rays and recombine to create ozone pollution.”
St. Louis fails in ozone pollution levels every year. Shouse said pollutants released by cars can cause health problems for children, the elderly, and people with predisposed illnesses such as asthma.
“I’ve actually been in those lines where you wait forever to pick up a student and there are people that run their engines the whole time,” Shouse said. “I think it’s extremely silly, both from an economic point of view and based on air quality. There’s no reason to do that, so I’m all for a policy.”
Bill Sloan, Transportation Director, said the district wants to make sure that it is compliant with the county ordinance.
“It’s really just reinforcing what the policies are,” Sloan said, “and getting the drivers to be more aware of and compliant with the policy.”
Administrators are in the process of tweaking the policy’s first draft. Sloan said the policy currently focuses on busses and other district vehicles and includes exceptions for extreme weather conditions.
“I think the intent is to raise awareness that we have a district policy and that there is a county ordinance,” Sloan said. “I don’t think there is a whole lot we can do to enforce it other than to maybe put up some signs that idling should be limited to three minutes.”
