Physical Environment » Physical Environment

Physical Environment

HEALTHY SCHOOL ENVIRONMENTS

Burlingame School District is actively identifying ways to improve the health of its schools and classrooms.

Accomplished Improvements:

  • All new carpeting in classrooms utilizes products that minimize or virtually eliminate the off-gassing of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and improve the Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) of our school.  The products the district is installing creates a unique floor covering that has all the performance benefits of hard-surface flooring with the aesthetic features of soft-surface flooring.
  • New non-waxed floors Marmoleum is a natural floor made from 97% natural raw materials, 70% of which are rapidly renewable, along with a 43% recycled content.  Using this flooring helps create reductions in the amount of strippers and chemicals in our schools by hundreds of pounds, improving the IAQ.
  • All green-certified, less toxic cleaning products and perfume-free hand soaps are now in use District-wide. The use of greener products improves the IAQ and reduces longterm health impacts caused by chemical cleaners. 

Improvements in the Process:

  • Transition to recycled content paper products

SCHOOL GARDENS

BIS Garden

The BIS Garden thrives on student participation and hosts a weekly lunchtime Garden Club that meets to learn about growing food, healthy eating, and engage in from-the-garden cooking. As part of the garden club, the students make and eat food harvested from the garden.  To volunteer in the garden please contact Rusty Hopewell, or visit the garden webpage for more details. 

BIKE PARKING IMPROVEMENTS

The Burlingame School District is making improvements to its school site bike access and parking through funding from its Safe Routes to School grant. Here are some of the improvements completed and in progress:

Completed Improvements:

  • New BIS bike cage and bike racks completed (2015)
  • New bike racks at Roosevelt, McKinley, Washington, and BIS (2014)
  • BIS Scooter and Skateboard secure parking - installed a Park-A-Bike SkateDocks (2016)
  • New bike racks at BIS replacing the old "wheel-bender" racks, and expanding capacity (2016)
  • New bike racks at Lincoln, Franklin, and Hoover (2016)
  • BIS Bike cage expanded and pedestrian walkway installed across parking lot (2016)

Improvements in Progress:

  • Assessing need for more BIS bike parking. 
  • Assessing bike parking needs at all elementary sites