Hughes was honored for its "Green Service Learning: A Hallmark of Sustainability Education" (federal text in detail below). The announcement from Washington, D.C. (timed for Earth Day) honored the schools for what the federal agency called [U.S. Dept. of Education release text] "exemplary efforts to reduce environmental impact and utility costs, promote better health, and ensure effective environmental education, including civics and green career pathways."

Only three other CA schools received the honor. (The other schools were in Aliso Viejo (OC), Redding and El Cerrito. The Oak Park Unified School District was the only CA school district among 14 nationwide cited for efforts to "make their schools healthier, safer, more cost efficient and sustainable".)

In its report on the 64 honored Green Schools, the U.S. Dept. of Education said the following about Hughes:

[Text Federeal report "Green Ribbon Schools: Highlights from the 2013 Honorees"] Charles Evans Hughes Middle School (CEH) campus culture is characterized by environmental service projects by all students, staff, and community members, resulting in hundreds of students actively participating in eco-service projects each year. In 2012-2013 year alone, student service projects included No Trash Day, the America Recycles Book Drive, Campus Work Days, Eco-Gift Workshops and Holiday Bazaar, Rain Barrel Workshops, Backyard Bird Count, the Share the Love Clothing Drive, the Urban Run-off Public Service Announcement Project, a plant sale, the Earth Day Paper, Shred, and E-waste Drive, and a bottle and can drive.

The school's location just five miles from the ocean motivates students to engage in service projects to address litter, urban run-off, and ocean pollution, including Campus Clean-up Days, the February Beach Clean-up, and anti-litter slogan, poster, and video contests. Since 2007, students have planted over 40 campus trees, helping combat air pollution resulting from the school’s location near the Port of Long Beach, the 405 and 710 freeways, and Long Beach Airport and Los Angeles Airport. The school’s sixth through eighth graders plan the events, create posters and banners, make announcements, speak before City Council, lead peers in workshops, create videos, and maintain the 12 campus gardens. Even the school library is in on the act, by partnering with Spring Street Farm to create "Food for Thought" program, encouraging families to buy locally grown fruit and vegetables, with a percentage of sales benefiting the library.

On the conservation front, CEH works with the Long Beach School District’s energy conservation manager, who has reduced district energy consumption costs by an annual average of $3.6 million dollars since 2002. CEH uses electronic thermostats, delamping and changed from T12 toT8 lighting, to yield a 60 percent heat emission reduction and 60 percent energy savings. One hundred percent of the school’s landscaping is water efficient and regionally appropriate, and 100 percent of the paper used is post-consumer materials, fiber from forests, and/or chlorine free. The school uses Safe Routes to School, and over 81 percent of students use alternative methods of transportation.

CEH has diverted 103 tons from the waste stream since 2009. On average, the school diverts 1,440 gallons of recycling each week. Volunteers recently instituted a lunch recycling program that includes collecting unopened milk and whole fruits for the Salvation Army’s soup kitchen, and collecting food scraps for chicken feed at Spring Street Urban Farm. On average, CEH collects 808 pounds of recovered food and food scraps per week. CEH students are active, receiving 4.5 hours of physical education each week, including two mile runs, fitness assessments, and skills training. The school also has outstanding afterschool sports, in which approximately 120 students compete and train for almost 9,600 hours each year.

The campus is covered in interpretive signs outlining the environmental principles in the landscape, like composting, vegetable gardening, xeriscaping, butterfly gardening, recycling, biodiversity, beneficial herbs, and labyrinth walking. In addition, the campus is laden with amenities created by students from reused and repurposed materials, like giant flowers made from wheels, planters from pallet wood or tires, bottle-cap signs, dragonflies with aluminum wings, benches from discarded headboards, and mosaic stepping stones of unwanted tile.

Students learn about environmental career options, with environmental literacy incorporated in language arts, history, physical education, home economics, wood shop, and health courses. In 2012, students designed a Watershed Garden to teach how natural watersheds function and how urban landscapes can be altered to act more like natural environments. The Watershed Garden demonstrates ways the urban landscape can mimic the natural environment, incorporating rain barrels, diffusion boxes, infiltration basins, permeable pavements, and native plants.

CEH is the largest middle school in Long Beach, with the most diverse population economically and ethnically; over 54 percent of students are eligible for free and reduced price lunch. What is possible at CEH is possible city-wide!

(Images below are from the Hughes Middle School "Green Team" webpage. To view additional images, scroll down and across using scroll bars):

On learning of today's award, Hughes Principal Sally Gregory said in an LBUSD release, "We're thrilled to be recognized with this high honor. Congratulations to our Green Team parent volunteers, teachers, staff and students who have worked so hard to reduce our impact on the environment. They've set a national example, and we couldn't be prouder."

This is the second year of the U.S. Dept. of Education's "Green Schools" honors...and the second year in a row that an LBUSD school has received the national honor. Last year, Longfellow Elementary School (next door to Hughes) garnered the award.

LBUSD's release notes that "Hughes earned a U.S. Department of Energy and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Energy Star 2012 award for energy conservation, with a perfect score of 100. Since 2007, students have built 12 themed gardens and planted more than 40 campus trees. New landscaping on the campus perimeter includes plants known to capture particulate matter, in an effort to improve air quality for the school and its neighbors."

[LBUSD release text] Hughes' Student Green Team publishes the Green Gazette, a schoolwide eco-newsletter that includes healthy recipes using produce from the school's gardens. Interpretive signs outline the environmental principles in the school's landscaping, like composting, vegetable gardening, xeriscaping, butterfly gardening, recycling, biodiversity, beneficial herbs, and labyrinth walking. Hughes also partners with a local bike store to host monthly bike repair and safety workshops on campus, encouraging ridership throughout the community.

Hughes supports environmental service projects by students, staff and community members, resulting in hundreds of students actively participating in eco-service projects each year. In the 2012-13 year alone, student service projects included No Trash Day, the America Recycles Book Drive, Campus Work Days, Eco-Gift Workshops and Holiday Bazaar, Rain Barrel Workshops, Backyard Bird Count, the Share the Love Clothing Drive, the Urban Run-off Public Service Announcement Project, a plant sale, the Earth Day Paper, Shred and E-waste Drive, and a bottle and can drive.

Hughes was nominated for the national honor in February by CA Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson, who visited Hughes to announce the nomination. Today, Torlakson issued a statement congratulating the national winners:

"I am proud of these schools and districts for earning their green ribbons by reducing environmental impacts while increasing awareness of the fragile world we live in. Students who have had the chance to improve the air, or grow a vegetable, or capture the rain will never look at the world the same way again. I hope all California students get this chance to learn how to protect the Earth and all those who live here."

The U.S. Dept. of Education report on the honorees says this year's selectees "were confirmed from a pool of candidates voluntarily nominated and exhaustively reviewed by 32 state education agency implementation teams. While selection processes vary from state to state, selection committees are generally comprised of members from several state agencies as well as outside experts. In the second step of selection, states’ nominees to ED were reviewed by our team of several dozen federal reviewers from across four agencies."