The "Healthy Schools, Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities" workshop took a complete look at what makes a school green and the work being done to make our schools healthier and safer. One of the topics tackled was the prevalence of PCBs in schools, and the efforts being made to ensure our schools are safe places for students, teachers, and support staff. The PCBs in schools, particularly older districts, may come from ballasts in older lights. New York Lawyers for the Public Interest estimates that 25 million lights are old and at risk for containing these chemicals. To replace those 25 million lights, they estimate that 19,000 jobs would be created.

Mark Bishop from the Healthy Schools Campaign, a national organization based out of Chicago, focused on environmental justice and expanding awareness of green schools.

"Let's raise the floor, so we can have a safe and healthy environment for all," Bishop said. "We have to make sure health and environment are recognized as an intrinsic part of a quality education."

Gretchen Gigley, the Director of Eduation for The Clean Air Campaign, spoke on how transportation figures into the green schools mix. They have developed a menu of programs aimed at reducing parents idling their engines while waiting for their kids to get done with school, advocating for riding the bus or carpooling, and creating lesson plans focused on cleaning the air. "This an an opportunity to educate students and empower them at their schools," said Gigley.

Green Ribbons Schools -- a program of the U.S. Department of Education to recognize schools efforts to become greener -- were also a topic of discussion. The three pillars of Green Ribbon Schools are environmental impact/energy efficiency, healthy school environment, and environmental education. Schools that qualify as Green Ribbon Schools are schools that have achieved excellence in those three categories.

"Even in America, the richest country in the world, we're sending kids to schools that were built in the 1800s," said Sean Miller from Earth Day Network. "Every kid in America deserves to go to a healthy school. Let's get going on that."

As we discussed during the first day of Good Jobs, Green Jobs South, in order for the South and America to move into the green economy, we must make smart investments in new transportation technologies and infrastructure projects. We were excited to learn that Southern Environmental Law Center will be helping us in these efforts today when they announced their new blog JunctionATL.

This blog – written primarily by SELC attorneys Brian Gist and Wyatt Kendall – will “dig deep to explain how local, state and federal policies affect transportation and land use in and around Atlanta” and discuss issues like transit funding, sustainable development, high-speed rail, pedestrian and biking projects.

This blog will be an important resource for individuals wanting to learn about transportation issues in and around Atlanta and for keeping the discussions happening at Good Jobs, Green Jobs South continuing after the conference ends on Friday.

Make sure to check out SELC’s exciting coverage at http://www.JunctionATL.org.

There has been extensive media attention about how 2011 was one of the most disastrous years for environmental disasters. With these disasters, there has been an increased interest in environmental disaster preparedness and response plans.

At Good Jobs, Green Jobs South, I attended the “Oil Spills, Twisters, Hurricanes and Other Hazards: Responding to Workplace and Environmental Disasters” workshop where experts from the BlueGreen Alliance, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), United Steelworkers (USW) and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) talked about how we’ve learned from past disasters and what is being done to ensure America is prepared for the next one.

The following blog on the BlueGreen Alliance Foundation’s Good Jobs, Green Jobs South Conference, written by Marco Trbovich, Vice President of Strategic Communications for Tricom Associates, is cross-posted from the HuffPost Green blog. The Good Jobs, Green Jobs West Conference kicks off next week in Los Angeles March 15, 2012. Read more here about the upcoming conference.

Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed led a presentation on his city’s initiative to retrofit a wide range of commercial, public and residential buildings in a 400-block area of downtown that proved the highlight of a gathering of investors, pension fund managers, business, labor and community leaders at Heartland Capital Strategies’ first Responsible Investment Forum.   The forum, sponsored in collaboration with the BlueGreen Alliance, addressed the need for greater alternative investments to sustain the real economy, an investment arena largely abandoned by Wall Street.