Other ways to be green

                              Rain Gardens

 

The main points of our policy are to create a garden where no water is wasted and to create a nice looking garden. What is a rain garden? A rain garden is a garden that allows rainwater runoff from roofs, driveways, lawn areas and walkways. The water is used to water the flowers and plants inside of the rain garden. It saves all the water we normally waste and everyone could really the excess water.  
      We can develop support among individuals and groups by spreading awareness about rain gardens and showing examples of school rain gardens that did work. Another thing we can do is find good deals on supplies, for our rain gardens so we can eliminate the costly factor of our project. Many generous people could also bring in supplies for our class to use so we don't need to spend any money on them. Therefore, if someone was to say its to expensive we can say its actually not because we found a really good deal on the supplies needed. 
     There are many influential groups that would be willing to support our project. One group would be the local Ace hardware store. They might be willing because if we asked them to support our local school project more people from the community would shop at Ace hardware store. Another group of people that might be willing to support our project are Mr. Hull and Mr. Shilkus. Mr. Hull is the 7th grade social studies teacher at Elm Place he is the one that taught us the information we needed to know to complete Project Citizen and also guided us trough this project. Mr. Shilkus is the school Wood shop and Architecture teacher. I think he would be a good help to our project because he could not only help us build are rain garden but help design it too.  
   The groups that will oppose our policy are some of the other core subject and elective teachers because building a rain garden is a big time commitment that just might take some of our school day that may be during that teacher’s class. For example if I had English right before lunch and had to leave a little early and come back a few minutes late to work on the rain garden during lunch that teacher might not want that to happen because its there class time that I am missing.
     We might persuade opposing groups to support our policy by promising them to make up all class time that we missed. Another thing we could to is convince the opposing groups that we are helping there planet, one step at a time and by letting us miss some class time, they are doing there part in helping there planet.
      Those in government who would support our solution are pro extra public school funding. They would have to be pro school funding because this solution is not a free one actually relatively costly to make a good rain garden. Therefore if you liked to use taxpayer’s money to pay for the public schools you would want to help fund this project.
       Those in government who might oppose our policy would probably be anti extra school funding. They would have to be anti extra funds because this would require more money than just Mr. Hull lecturing us. Therefore, if you did not want to use taxpayers money to go anymore to the schools.
       Additional obstacles that we may face in order to get this plan into action are the price and time to put into this. According to some research we did on the Internet, the average cost would be about $1,000 for a decent size rain garden. We would probably have to put in a total of 40 hours into it including daily check ups.

                                 Motion Sensor Lights

The main points of our policy are to create a school with more efficient lighting. The best way to do this is with Motion Censored lights. Motion Censored lights are lights that are triggered on when they sense movement in a room and go off after a certain amount of time of not sensing any movement. If we have these in many classrooms all over the school, it would save a lot of energy that we waste daily. We wouldn't need to pay for many light bulbs anymore and no one would need to worry about turning off the lights.
We will develop support among individuals and groups by making signs and raising awareness about how these lights will help our school. We can ask people around the school to see if they agree to what we are trying to do.  We would have to give examples of places that have them and how much energy and money they saved by using them. 
      Influential individuals and groups who might be willing to support our policy are Mr. Hull, Dr. Olsen and Mrs. King and other representatives for our city or school. Mr. Hull is the seventh grade social studies teacher and has taught us everything we need to know. So if we have an idea to help our school like he wanted, we can get him to agree. We would have to persuade Dr. Olsen and Mrs. King to letting our school have these lights because if they don't we would not be able to have them. These lights are expensive so if many people of the city or school do not want them, we wouldn't spend our money there might be groups that do not like this idea. People who work for the city of Highland Park or staff at our school that do not like our idea might have a way to make it not happen. If we ask many students and teachers if we should have them and most say no because they cost too much, then it might become a problem. We can buy less and not have them in every class, but that will not do much for our school. The superintendent and other representatives might say no because the cost is too high for our school to spend money on.  
We can persuade the opposing groups by giving all of them examples of schools that have the Motion Sensor lighting and how much the lights have helped them become more green. We can also have a bake sale or breakfast to raise money so we don't need to spend so much of our own that we have now. When we show how much this type of lighting will help our school and raise money that we can spend on them, maybe the people that do not agree will change their minds.       
Those in government who would support our solution would be pro technology in the schools, pro extra funding in schools and pro saving energy. They would have to be pro technology in the class rooms because Motion sensor lights is a new technology in the school therefore if you wanted to keep the school "same old, same old" without any new technology you would not like this and would be anti-new technology in schools. Other people in the government would support this too if they where pro extra funding they would like this because it is an expensive project to put in motion sensor lights therefore if you where pro extra funding you would approve of this and if you where anti extra funding you would not approve. Finally the other group of government that would help support this plan are pro saving electricity in the schools because this saves energy and if you where not into saving energy you would not want this.        
Additional obstacles that we may face would be that the lights might not work or sense the motion that no on is in the room. If some break or do not work over time, we would need to spend even more money on replacing them. If more than one does not work, we would have to get a lot more. We would just have to find ways to raise more money for us to spend on the broken lights.