Certified Green School

The Pennington Montessori School is ‘greening’ our school and has been awarded Silver LEED - EB certificationion. Developed by United States Green Building Council, the LEED rating system is a nationally accepted benchmark for green buildings. We currently are proud to be an Energy Star certified school.

Pennington Montessori is one of only 23 exisiting buildings in New Jersey to have achieved this award. Pennington Montessori is one of only a few exisiting schools in the country to have earned this recognition.

LEED is like a “nutritional label” for a green, healthy school. It gives parents and the community confidence in the environment in which their children, teachers, and staff are spending their days. The certification process will guide the Pennington Montessori School in identifying opportunities for us to reduce energy, water and resource consumption; enhance the indoor environment; and drive down operational costs. 

Why are we ‘Greening’ the school? Benefits of a Green school include:

• Green schools create a healthy environment that is conducive to learning while saving energy, resources, and money.
• Green schools support student learning through improvements in indoor air quality, lighting, thermal comfort, and maintenance practices – all of which have an important impact on a child’s ability to learn and a teacher’s ability to teach;
• The benefits of superior indoor air quality – a key emphasis of green schools – have been linked to lower asthma rates, fewer allergies, reduced absenteeism, and increased teacher retention rates;
• Green schools cost less to operate, utilize durable materials, and greatly reduce water
• and energy use, which generates substantial financial savings;
• Green schools provide an educational experience that transcends the classroom by creating a host of opportunities for curriculum innovation and hands-on, project based learning in which the building itself becomes an interactive teaching tool.

How can families get involved? As we start our school year, we will be putting into action many new initiatives as part of our ‘Greening’ project and to achieve LEED certification. There are several ways in which you can participate including:

• Send your child’s lunch in ‘green’ packaging, which means using reusable ‘Tupperware’ like containers instead of disposable zip lock bags.
• Minimize the use of individually packaged snacks. Buy snacks in bulk and package them in reusable containers.
• Limit the use of juice boxes and disposable water bottles by using reusable bottles.
• Recycle instead of throwing away any unneeded papers you receive from the school.
• Encourage your child to tell you about the changes happening in their classrooms as part of the ‘Greening the School’ project, including recycling and composting of our waste, use of ‘green’ school supplies (e.g., recycled paper), reducing the use of paper towels by using rags to clean up spills, reminders of reducing paper, water and energy use, and many more!