School District Five school named SC Green Step Conserve School of the Year

For Immediate Release – June 6, 2023

School District Five school named SC Green Step Conserve School of the Year

IRMO –Leaphart Elementary School STEAM Magnet has been recognized as the 2023 South Carolina Green Step Conserve School of the Year for their ongoing efforts to protect the air and water around their school.

The Green Steps program guides teachers and students through a process of implementing eco-friendly educational activities throughout their schools and community. 

"I continue to be so proud of the work our staff and students are doing,” Leaphart Elementary School Principal Courtney Sims said. “As a STEAM magnet, we seek to reimagine how materials can be used in an unconventional way.  Through our engineering design process, we re-use and recycle materials almost daily.  Being selected as the Conserve School of the Year shows that our green STEAM efforts are making an impact!"

Leaphart Elementary won for their projects in Reuse, Recycling and Green Purchasing (harvesting and selling seeds from the sunflowers they grew). Leaphart Elementary has developed a culture of enlisting children to participate in projects that benefit their community like collecting and preparing typical items for recycling, collecting plastic bags for the TREX Challenge, collecting gently used shoes for Keep the Midlands Beautiful’s annual shoe drive, and using STEAM skills to repurpose items that would otherwise be thrown away.

Leaphart was named a Green Step School in 2022 and earned the certification by establishing and maintaining model quality sustainability projects.

“SC Green Step Schools projects provide easy, no-cost hands-on eco learning opportunities for students across the curriculum,” Green Step Schools Coordinator Jane Hiller said. “These experiences help students learn life skills that positively impact their environment while providing a base for further reading and learning about related content.” 

Every K-12 school in South Carolina is invited to participate in The Environmental Education Association of SC’s Green Step Schools Initiative. The free program provides qualified mentors to schools who wish to empower students to establish and sustain projects that conserve, protect and restore the environment. Schools submit videos or pictures with detailed captions documenting students learning, doing and teaching others about their projects. Both schools and their mentors earn annual awards for projects that can serve as models for other schools.

Green Step began in the 2003-2004 school year with seven Midlands schools participating. This school year 39 schools in 15 counties participated in the program supported by 45 qualified mentors.

Dutch Fork Elementary Academy of Environmental Sciences and Irmo Middle School are also Green Step Certified schools.