ACTION PLAYBOOK:

Contact School Districts

Step 1: Find contact information and write it down

School governance and decision-making structures vary widely by locality. We want to find the contact information for the people who make decisions about the district’s facility operations, budget (especially CapEx funds aka, big upgrades and one-time investments), and climate or environmental initiatives. These people might include: 

  • Your school superintendent (this might be city- or county-level, depending on your state)

  • One member of your school board (your own district or at-large)

  • The district’s Operations Director, if available

  • The district’s Climate/Environmental staff member, if available.

To find contact information for these decision-makers, start by looking at the school district’s website. You may only find a generic email and phone number for the whole office rather than the individuals. That’s a great place to start.

  • If you have time to do a deeper search for individual contact information within your city’s school system, it can help increase your chances of receiving a response. You might have success with this on LinkedIn, or spending more time finessing your Google search.

Step 2: Send an email

Personalize the template email below. When you’re ready, hit send using the email address you found in Step 1.

Please bcc advocacy@climatechangemakers.org so we can track our collective impact.

Step 3: Make a phone call

Use your letter as a call script!

Step 4: Report back!

👍  Did you get an enthusiastic response? Awesome! Forward it to advocacy@climatechangemakers.org, and share your win in the Climate Changemakers Slack—other changemakers will find it motivating and inspiring. 

👎 Get a not-so-enthusiastic response? Part of being an effective advocate is understanding the barriers for schools, then adapting our strategy accordingly. Please forward the response to advocacy@climatechangemakers.org, and consider sharing it out in the Climate Changemakers Slack so others can learn, too. After all, we’re trying to grease the wheels to deploying climate solutions, so the more we know, the more effective we can become as connectors and advocates.

Step 5: Ask a friend to do it too

Network effects are powerful. Persuading friends and family to take climate action is a crucial step toward changing cultural norms and making real progress. Now that you’ve taken this action, send a note to a friend, along with this playbook, asking them to send an email or make a call to their school officials. Simplify the process for them by forwarding your own email as a model and the contact information you found if they live in the same city. And if your friend ends up taking action, don’t forget to let us know! (See the previous step).

And that’s it, playbook complete! Feel accomplished.
Thank you for taking action.

🎉 CUE CONFETTI by clicking COMPLETE! 🎉

Want more action?
Go to the current Action Plan

© 2023 Climate Changemakers