Shan Zhou (Social Sciences) recently published “Environmental Justice and Green Schools—Assessing Students and Communities’ Access to Green Schools” in the journal Social Science Quarterly. This article investigates equity in the distribution of green schools in the U.S., what kind of student populations they serve, and what kind of communities host them. Leveraging national school enrollment data (2000–2014), Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) data, and communities’ characteristics data from 2010 U.S. Census, Shan Zhou and coauthors estimate logit models to examine the association between green schools and student and community demographics. Results show that higher percentages of minorities in both student population and hosting neighborhood are associated with greater likelihood that new schools are green, and that new schools in more affluent and less educated communities are less likely to be green.
