Poor school air quality negatively impacts students and educators and is especially harmful to those with lung diseases, like asthma. This toolkit provides information and resources that you can use to improve school air quality and keep students with asthma healthy. It was written with families, students, and educators in mind; particularly, those who care about protecting students from poor school air quality.
Recommendations include increasing building ventilation, implementing classroom air quality monitors, using portable HEPA air cleaners, hiring full-time school nurses, and stocking quick-relief asthma medications in every school.
This toolkit provides multiple strategies and resources to choose from based on capacity, recognizing that not everyone is able to participate in time-consuming advocacy efforts. You can choose to take action at the school, district, or state level and select from resources including a simple checklist that you can fill in and use to start a conversation with a school principal, an infographic that you can share with a classroom teacher, a sample school board resolution and talking points you may use to collaborate with a policymaker, or model state legislation you can share with your state representative.
This toolkit is designed as a supplement to the many already-existing resources, such as the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Tools for Schools and the EPA Managing Asthma in the School Environment, that recommend simple and low-cost practices, like removing asthma triggers from classrooms and developing asthma management plans. By integrating the tools and strategies found in this toolkit, we aim to provide a comprehensive guide that empowers all interest holders to take actionable steps toward improving school air quality.
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