Climate Resilience Design Program: From Classroom to Community Action

The Challenge: address school district priorities to better manage green infrastructure by training students to connect with their environments.

One of the largest landowners in Prince George’s County, Maryland, is Prince George’s County Public Schools (PGCPS), which owns and maintains hundreds of school campuses, making land management a significant part of the district’s climate responsibility.

In 2022, PGCPS adopted the Climate Change Action Plan (CCAP), naming Climate Resilient Land Management as one of its seven priorities. The plan called for reducing stormwater runoff, improving water quality, and better managing green infrastructure, including rain gardens, bioswales, tree canopy, and permeable surfaces.

The Vision: take students out of the classroom and onto school grounds to learn how their campus functions as a system and could be improved.

Prince George’s County Public Schools engaged the Neighborhood Design Center (NDC) to pilot a Student Climate Resilient Design Program at Central High School in Capitol Heights, Maryland. NDC developed an interactive, classroom-based program in 2023 and piloted it spring semester 2024.

Central High School was selected as the pilot site based on teacher interest, administrative support, and campus conditions that made stormwater and heat-related challenges visible and relevant.

The school’s location within the Anacostia River watershed—an area with long-standing water quality and runoff concerns—made it a particularly strong setting for exploring how campus-level design decisions connect to broader watershed health.

Over five weeks, NDC led students through a hands-on, project-based education module in landscape architecture and environmental science.

Throughout the pilot, NDC Landscape Design staff Jenny Smeltzer and Micaela Ada worked closely with the classroom teacher Ms. Mahajan, environmental education staff, and district partners. NDC created lesson plans, led instruction for core lessons, supported student work sessions, and shared progress updates with CCAP stakeholders.

NDC worked with the William S. Schmidt Outdoor Education Center to secure a grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) to make this project possible.

The Plan: use the school campus as a living laboratory for field research.

NDC staff led students through campus site inventories, helping them document environmental conditions such as stormwater pooling, impervious paving, shade, slopes, and existing vegetation, and interpreting how water moved across the site.

Building on this field research, NDC guided students in analyzing challenges and opportunities on campus. The students in the class recounted experiences with persistent flooding near and access to athletic areas, intense sun and a lack of shade in outdoor spaces commonly used by students, and limited biodiversity in heavily used areas.

Students noted that public-facing areas (the front of the school) receive more planting and attention related to comfort and beautification, while practice field areas and potential leisure space at the back of the school are more spare and basic. 

Using their findings, students developed conceptual green infrastructure plans tailored to Central High School.

With support from the NDC team, they explored solutions such as rain gardens, bioswales, expanded tree canopy, native pollinator gardens, permeable paving and rain barrels, considering how these features could work together as a connected system.

Maintenance planning was intentionally integrated into the design process. NDC introduced students to the long-term care needs of different stormwater management features and facilitated discussions about staffing, capacity, and seasonal maintenance. The program concluded with students presenting both a conceptual design and a draft maintenance plan. NDC developed a final master plan, as well.

The Build: a ready-to-use toolkit of resources that can be implemented in other schools.

NDC developed a comprehensive toolkit for the Student Climate Resilient Design Program for High School Classrooms. The toolkit includes seven structured lesson plans supported by slide decks, instructional materials, and clear guidance for educators.

Lessons walk students through a complete design process from site inventory and analysis to community engagement, concept design, and presentation.

The toolkit also includes rubrics, vocabulary lists, and examples that make complex concepts accessible and manageable for students, all while maintaining alignment with Maryland Environmental Literacy Standards, NEXT Generation Science Standards, and the PGCPS Climate Change Action Plan.

The Future: use student learning as a way to build awareness, capacity, and care for climate-resilient infrastructure over time.

The Central High School pilot offers a model for how school systems can pair land management goals with education, and demonstrated the value of connecting climate resilience education to real places students know and use every day.

The Student Climate Resilient Toolkit is now a complete, ready-to-use resource that can be implemented in other PGCPS schools. With additional funding, NDC hopes to expand the program to new campuses, incorporate hands-on implementation and maintenance activities, and work with students as long-term stewards of their school landscapes.