Learning the Impact of Air Quality

School’s out for summer! Well, not quite as Tuesday is the second-to-last day of public school for children. But the kids will be out early today: high-schoolers at 11:30 a.m.; middle-schoolers at 12:30 p.m.; and the elementary children at 1:30 p.m.

We’ll be cleaning out the education notebook over the course of the next few days and we begin by focusing on students at learning about and promoting clean air through a special campaign at the school.

Principal Linda Keeney, school nurse Margaret Jourden, along with Rebecca Watts-Hull and Natasha Herbert of Mothers & Others for Clean Air, collaborated to incorporate an air quality awareness program into the everyday activities at the Reed Road school.

Already a participating in the Georgia Clean Air Schools program, the school flies color-coded flags indicating the air quality index for the day.

Keeney and the fifth grade team of news anchors on KTV mention the daily index during each morning’s closed-circuit TV broadcast, helping the student body understand the impact of air quality on health and well-being.

Lisa McKinley, an environmental scientist with the EPA, is also a parent of twins at King Springs and has worked closely with the school to educate parents and staff on asthma and other environmental health-related risks.