When I was a public school teacher in South Los Angeles and Compton, California, my students often complained about the lack of greenery and shade in the schoolyard. Recess was very uncomfortable because the archaic black asphalt made the scorching heat even worse. This experience is unfortunately common in city schools—according to a recent Los Angeles Times report, the vast majority of California’s K-12 students in urban areas attend schools with virtually no shade in their schoolyards. Children are more vulnerable to the effects of heat than adults, and rising temperatures due to climate change are affecting their attention, memory, and focus, in turn jeopardizing their opportunities to learn.
Environmental injustice persists when extreme heat is magnified in underserved communities, where school building infrastructure is often outdated or lacks proper airflow or ventilation. I’ve experienced this as a professor in Los Angeles, where I’ve had to move my instruction online due to recurring heatwaves, as well as during the 2025 wildfires due to concerns about the air quality outside. Green Schoolyards America’s National Schoolyard Forest System is leading a nationwide effort to create “schoolyard forests,” but more investment is necessary.
Teachers and students should not be forced to wait for slow-moving policies or initiatives to provide relief, or endure the consequences of their government’s failure to fund infrastructure updates altogether. Unions, and teachers unions in particular, have spent decades fighting for social and economic justice. Now, they are stepping up to demand environmental justice for schools and the communities they serve. In recent years, several major teachers unions—including United Teachers Los Angeles, the Chicago Teachers Union, and the Boston Teachers Union—have demonstrated how labor negotiations, climate action, and K-12 public education can all go hand-in-hand.
In 2023, United Teachers Los Angeles secured a memorandum of understanding with the Los Angeles Unified School District called Healthy, Green Public Schools. This initiative includes the creation of outdoor education spaces and water filtration stations; expanding no-cost public transportation for students; removing lead pipes; increasing the number of electric school buses and solar panels on school buildings; and creating pathways to green jobs for students. In addition, a “Climate Champion” is established at school sites that provides a stipend for teachers who choose to take on this role of integrating climate justice into curricula.
Similar efforts by teachers unions to advocate for environmental justice are happening across the country. In April 2025, the Chicago Board of Education ratified the Chicago Teachers Union’s Green Schools campaign proposal, a groundbreaking step toward bringing environmental justice into the collective bargaining agreement with Chicago Public Schools. The Boston Teachers Union has also been advocating for climate justice through its Climate Justice Committee.
Beyond the conditions of their schools and communities, teaching students about the history of solidarity among working people in the United States equips them to organize and take action for climate and environmental justice in their own communities.
One way to do this is by teaching K-12 students about the environmental justice movement, and how workers have mobilized and engaged in civil disobedience throughout history to fight unjust environmental working conditions. Students can learn from examples like the Memphis Sanitation Workers’ Strike of 1968, during which 1,300 Black sanitation workers fought against pollution and hazardous working conditions after two of their fellow workers died in an avoidable accident, and eventually won union recognition from the Memphis City Council, as well as its recommendation for a wage increase.
Historical lessons like these offer students the opportunity to make present-day connections between organized labor and environmental protection. In the case of the Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike, students can draw parallels to a modern-day example from last year, when sanitation workers walked off the job in cities in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, urging residents to not put their recycling or trash out. The resulting buildup of waste affects community members’ daily lives, potentially increasing pressure to end the strike and meet the workers’ demands. Improving their working conditions, therefore, becomes an issue that community members cannot ignore. Workers in frontline communities are more likely to be exposed to environmental hazards. Thus, the labor movement can help advance environmental justice issues by advocating for policies and protections in the workplace. Teachers unions are doing just that.
Teachers unions are not only fighting for better wages and workplace conditions; they are also engaging in social justice unionism, which involves defending the rights of union members while also advocating for the wider needs of students and communities—which includes environmental justice. When teachers fight for environmental justice and teach their students about the importance of solidarity, they contribute to the tradition of youth-led climate movements and equip students to organize for the world they deserve.