This story was produced under The LA Local’s Youth Journalism Program. To learn more or to get involved, click here.
As climate change brings more extreme weather and environmental challenges, local students, teachers, and staff are working together to prepare for a changing world.
From classroom and vegetable gardens, to cultural eco-centers, and sustainable infrastructure, three Eastside schools are finding accessible ways to help the environment and the community.
Theodore Roosevelt High School — Boyle Heights
For Theodore Roosevelt High in Boyle Heights, the eco-friendly changes to its century-old campus came about in a different way.
In 2018, the LAUSD School Board approved a multimillion-dollar modernization project plan for Roosevelt, which received an initial $173 million and later a revised budget of $216 million.
Once funding was approved, LAUSD and LPA Studios created a plan that included the shared goals of sustainability: reducing energy use, water consumption and waste.
“We believe that sustainability is not just a checklist of meeting goals, but rather something to inform our design and to be integrated early on in our design,” said Albert Lam, project manager at LPA Studios.
The plan included building updates that included climate-friendly features to support students amid the ever-changing climate, including installing cool roofs, reflective pavement, and rebuilding green spaces that act as cooling areas.
An example of the plan in action is the cool roofs; they act as a surface where light can be reflected rather than absorbed to combat the warming of the buildings.
Now, the renovated campus is home to four new buildings, a new football field, a performing arts center, and a lunch shelter, with many of the eco-friendly features.
Hollenbeck Middle School — Boyle Heights
In 2025, teachers proposed revitalizing the Hollenbeck Middle School community garden. Previously, grant funding helped maintain the garden, but once that funding ended, it was left unkept.
Now, it has become a powerful place where students are able to feel safe and learn about gardening.
“When we came back this school year, we knew that the kids were dealing with a lot of stress at home. There were these horrible ICE raids happening across the city, and our children were so anxious,” said Sharon Nicholls, the school’s librarian, who also helps manage garden activities, including Garden Club.
Last fall, Hollenbeck organized cleanup days where students were encouraged to pick up trash and, in the process, earn community hours. The school also partnered with Promesa Boyle Heights and parents to prepare the space for revitalization, including purchasing supplies, seeds, and planning the upcoming gardening days.
“We all just kind of came in and cleaned it up, and we could see how beautiful it was underneath all the junk and trash- is such a gorgeous space,” said Nicholls.
Throughout the 2026 school year, teachers have incorporated plant knowledge into their curriculum through vegetable harvesting, weeding and caring for seedlings in classrooms. They have also collaborated with the after-school program Beyond The Bell to create the Garden Club.
After school on Thursdays, students go to the garden to fulfill volunteer hours and learn about the life living in the garden.
“I feel relaxed…the sound of the trees, and the wind relaxes me a lot,” said Dania, a student in the garden club.
The garden is surrounded by shady trees and benches and remains an open area during school hours, where students are allowed to roam freely through the green space they care for.
Looking toward the future, Nicholls hopes to continue expanding the program so that more teachers and students can explore the space.
“They book the library, and now they’re booking the garden,” said Nicholls of the growing interest from her colleagues in incorporating the garden in their lesson plans.
The garden now flourishes on the Hollenbeck Campus with a composter and a variety of vegetables and plants, including fresh mint, lemon balm, tomatoes, lettuce, zucchinis, cilantro, and even apple trees.
Anawakalmekak — El Sereno
Hidden in the hills of El Sereno is 12 acres of rematriated land that thrives through community hands and student engagement. Chief Ya’anna Learning Village serves as a learning center accessible to students from Anawakalmekak, the TK-through-12th-grade Intertribal Indigenous school located in El Sereno, and the surrounding community.
In partnership, Anawakalmekak and the Gabrielino Shoshone Nation of Southern California acquired this piece of land that was formerly used as a dump site. Now, it is a living ecosystem where students participate in planting workshops, tool safety and cultural teachings.
Started in 2022, the village is based on Land Back Learning. Tekpatl Kuauhtzin, the land stewardship manager of the learning village says its intention is “to support indigenous youth to grow up with land-based teachings and think about land back as not just a return of title to indigenous peoples, but also the return of indigenous peoples to land.”
As stewardship manager, Kuauhtzin helps facilitate the collaboration of communities within the site, including tribal networks, parents and staff, and community members who join land tending days.
Once the village was acquired, the land stewarding team assembled a cohort of students to conduct a two-year-long research project where the goal was to fully learn about the pre-existing life and imagine a vision for the future of the land. This cohort was called Yosentlapixkeh Youth Research Council.
In the beginning of the restoration process, 30 students volunteered to fulfill the role of Indigenous land stewards, tending to the land every Tuesday and Friday for two years. During this time, students were able to practice Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) while receiving a stipend of $200 every month.
Throughout this program, the cohort worked to revitalize the Urban Canopy, which is a practice of planting and caring for native trees to increase the shade that is accessible to the community and the land.
For Anawakalmekak, the revitalization doesn’t stop there; the trees are carefully selected to improve native species population and continue preserving cultural practices.
“We have these very intimate relationships with the trees that we plant,” says 28-year-old Ary Amaya, a Quetzal fellow at the school. “We can see them in the future, in 50, 100, 200 years, and we will be benefiting from those larger trees, whether it’s through their seeds that we’ll use for food or for dyeing, or whether it’s their limbs, which in the future will be used to make traditional crafts like bows and clapper sticks.”
Not only is the land centered on student learning, it is also accessible to surrounding communities, organizations, and leaders. On the second Saturday of each month, the Ya’anna Village management team hosts events called Community Land Tending Days, where community members can learn about the rematriation process.
“I think that’s what our vision is, it’s a collective vision that addresses our community’s needs that are identified by our students for the next several generations,” said Amaya.
To participate in community land tending days, visit @regenvillage on Instagram or email regenvillage@ndgnsla.org
