Motivated by research showing how the outdoors can aid in learning, the Los Angeles Unified School District is investing over  to transform heat-absorbing asphalt at every Los Angeles early education center into  that reconnect students with nature. 

The district has completed 23 of these makeovers, which are being used by 2,800 pre-k students. 

Earlier this month, parents, community members and LAUSD officials attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony at  where officials unveiled a new outdoor classroom designed to immerse young students in nature-based learning.

The $1.9 million makeover provided students with a colorful jungle gym, sprouting plants, musical instruments, and educational toys. It’s a classroom that feels like a park —  and it’s making parents even more excited to send their children to school.  

“I’m terrified because I don’t like bugs, and they like to pick up rocks, so they’re gonna pick up rocks and they’re gonna bring it home, and they’re gonna bring little caterpillars and bugs,” said LaDeja McIntyre about her three year old daughter. “But I’m excited too, because she gets to explore her mind…outside of the classroom and (in the) outdoors.” 

Construction at the Normandie Avenue center took about 16 months. District officials say it will take several more years to meet their goal of building outdoor classrooms at every early education center. Thirteen are currently under construction.

The classrooms are designed in collaboration with , a nonprofit working to incorporate nature into every child’s education. The group has partnered with LAUSD for 14 years and is currently designing more than 20 new outdoor classrooms. 

According to the , outdoor learning can improve children’s mental health, foster responsibility and stimulate imagination.   

Nature Explore educational consultant Kirsten Haugen and her colleague Jill Primak, an architect, are part of the team that brings the classrooms to life.

“Seeing children enter these spaces and spend their days in these spaces, they are a wonderful mixture of excitement and calm…they have a sense of purpose and a sense of efficacy that you don’t see when they’re in more chaotic spaces,” Haugen said. “Teachers feel better in these spaces so when we can set the stage for people to be their best selves, what could be better than that?”

For three years, LAUSD superintendent Alberto Carvalho, has been part of efforts to provide teachers and students with the stage to be their best selves. In 2024, voters approved Measure US, a $9 billion facilities fund, some of which is being used to build these outdoor classrooms. 

At the ribbon cutting ceremony for Normandie Avenue, Carvalho said the district is committed to expanding these classrooms to every early education center.

Even though Measure US is providing the district with bonds, Carvalho’s recent visit to Washington D.C. has made him concerned about the future of programs meant to improve student wellbeing, such as the outdoor classrooms. 

“There are actions that could significantly undermine the quality, not just of education, but the quality of life of people in our community,” Carvalho said. “So in as much as we celebrate the greatness of our investments, we need to be mindful of the threats that could derail everything we have worked so hard to do.” 

According to a report by the , Los Angeles has less park space than most major U.S. cities. The city offers just 3.3 acres of parkland per 1,000 residents, compared to a 6.8-acre median in other metro areas. 

Normandie Avenue principal Rhonda Granados said access to the outdoor space has changed the way students are learning. After the ribbon cutting ceremony, she played with a few students who were building ramps to slide balls down into a bed of wood chips. 

“What’s really rewarding is that they don’t know that they hadn’t been in nature because we had all asphalt,” Granados said. “When they come out here, they’re touching the leaves and the plants, and they’re asking questions about, how come this one’s green, but this one’s yellow, so it’s really rewarding to see their mind starting to ask questions and investigate and really want to know how things work.” 

This article is part of a collaboration between The 74 and the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

When Espie Chapman began teaching introductory agriculture classes at Kailua Intermediate School three years ago, the plot of land near her classroom was mostly vacant except for a small orchard of fruit trees.

Chapman had no farming experience, but she was determined to create a space where her seventh and eighth grade students could grow fresh fruits and vegetables. She asked the teens what they wanted to plant and got to work purchasing wheelbarrows and seeds for her class.

The school’s garden now produces fruits and vegetables like bok choy, spinach and papaya that Chapman’s students transform into soups and salads to sample during class.

“We just try and look at what’s in our farm, and what kind of recipes can we do with that,” Chapman said. “If they’re going to try and eat it, we’ll make it happen.”

Chapman’s class teaches teens about nutrition and sustainability, but while students are cooking the kind of locally sourced and culturally relevant lunches that the Hawaii Department of Education aspires to provide in all schools, they can’t actually serve meals in the cafeteria.

DOE previously ran a pilot program to train schools on food safety and enable them to serve produce from their gardens, but the program has been on pause since the Covid-19 pandemic. Without it, Chapman would have to figure out how to meet strict federal and state protocols on her own to supply the school’s cafeteria with produce from the garden.

DOE did not respond to questions about the status of the Garden to Cafeteria program and whether schools will be able to participate in the future.

Approximately 85% of Hawaii schools have gardens, but only a few have serious agricultural programs where students earn certifications as food handlers or gain firsthand experience harvesting and selling produce and using sustainable growing methods.

Typically teachers use school gardens for lessons ranging from the life cycle of a plant to a poetry unit focused on nature. But some want to take their lessons a step further by using produce from the gardens in school meals, exposing more kids to fresh fruits and vegetables and giving students a sense of ownership over what they’re eating.

DOE has historically struggled to increase the use of local ingredients in school lunches, and advocates say gardens can encourage students to eat healthier.

“School gardens can galvanize a community,” said Natalie McKinney, chief program officer of the Kokua Hawaii Foundation, which promotes environmental education and runs a learning farm in Haleiwa.

‘A Hidden Gem’

Third grade teacher Rex Dubiel Shanahan planted a garden at Sunset Elementary when she first started teaching in 1987 and takes pride in showing students how to plant seeds or make kimchi using the carrots they grow.

“You can teach almost everything through the garden,” Dubiel Shanahan said.

Sunset Elementary participates in the Aina In Schools program, which is run by the Kokua Hawaii Foundation and provides schools with activities that tie gardening to lessons in science and nutrition. But, Dubiel Shanahan said, she would like more schools to have access to resources on sustainability and healthy eating for students.

In recent years, DOE has offered more professional development opportunities for teachers interested in starting gardens. It has developed resources for schools to create peace gardens to support student mental health and is helping teachers incorporate more lessons about native plants into their classes, said Jennifer Ryan, the department’s school garden coordinator.

Even with more resources and professional development available, it can be daunting for teachers to maintain school gardens on their own, said Waikiki Elementary Principal Ryan Kusuda. Schools don’t have a dedicated source of funding to hire full-time garden coordinators, and many campuses rely on families and teachers when it comes to weeding, harvesting and other tasks.

Waikiki Elementary has the extra budget to pay for a sustainability teacher and a part-time farm manager dedicated to facilitating student learning and keeping up the garden, Kusuda said, adding it would be difficult to maintain the space solely through volunteers.

“It’s a hidden gem,” Kusuda said, adding that the school has roughly 80 fruit trees supplying tangerines and starfruit that students can sample during class.

In some cases, schools use gardens to help jump-start students’ careers.

In Leilehua High School’s career and technical education program, students in the natural resources pathway are responsible for 3.5 acres of land on which they grow lettuce, beets, radishes and more. CTE teacher Jackie Freitas requires her students to earn their certifications in food handling and gain experience selling produce to teachers and families every week.

“We are trying to help our community and provide them with fresh produce that they can afford and that they know is safe,” Freitas said.

Other schools have taught their students the importance of eating local by drawing on their gardens to supply produce to their cafeterias.

Last month, students at the Hawaii Academy of Arts and Science supplied 160 pounds of kalo from their garden to the cafeteria. Cooks at the Big Island charter school turned the taro into poi, which students enjoyed with their lunches of kalua pork and rice, said teacher Wendy Baker.

While the gardens don’t produce enough fruits and vegetables to supply 600 lunches every day, Baker added, occasionally incorporating food from the garden in school lunches helps students appreciate the time and effort that goes into their meals.

“When they help the garden, the garden helps them,” Baker said.

But including produce from the garden in school meals raises the stakes when it comes to requirements around food safety.

Schools already follow best practices around harvesting and preparing produce, such as requiring students to sanitize their hands and thoroughly wash their fruits and vegetables, said Debbie Millikan, a member of the Hawaii Farm to School Network and director of sustainability at Punahou School. But when it comes to growing food for school meals, campuses need to comply with additional state and federal guidelines like testing their water for E. coli every year and tracking the exact location where students harvest produce.

If students get sick from school meals, Millikan said, it’s important for schools to identify the source of the problem and know where their ingredients originate.

“Food safety and garden safety is absolutely critical, no matter whether you’re growing it at home or growing in a school garden,” Millikan said. “The record-keeping part is really critical because you’re serving a large group of students a large amount of food.”

In 2018, DOE started a Garden to Cafeteria pilot program to adopt federal regulations around food safety and apply them to schools. Participating campuses were required to document their compliance with water, soil and food safety requirements in order to incorporate fruits and vegetables from their gardens into meals.

A dozen schools participated in the three-year pilot, but frequent turnover in DOE’s food services branch put the program on pause as schools reopened during the Covid-19 pandemic, said Dennis Chase, program manager at the Hawaii Public Health Institute. Most schools, including past participants in the pilot, haven’t been able to serve food from their gardens since.

McKinney at the Kokua Hawaii Foundation said she’s hopeful DOE will revive the program. Schools are unlikely to grow at the scale they need to produce all their own food, she added, but it’s important to incorporate more local produce in school meals so students will be more receptive to trying new fruits and vegetables in the future.

Other Ways To Meet School Food Needs

Numerous schools on the mainland — and a few in Hawaii — have been able to tackle food safety issues to grow food for their lunch programs, proving that the challenge is not insurmountable.

San Diego launched a program 10 years ago to train teachers and garden coordinators on how to safely plant and harvest food for school lunches, said Janelle Manzano, the district’s farm-to-school program specialist. Before the pandemic, she added, 10 to 15 schools participated in the program, although the number dropped to five last year.

It’s been difficult for some campuses to revive their gardens after the pandemic, Manzano said, but she’s hopeful more schools will start growing their own produce in the coming year.

At Leilehua High School, Freitas was undeterred when DOE’s Garden to Cafeteria pilot ended. Last year, Freitas received a Good Agricultural Practices certification from the United States Department of Agriculture for the school’s hydroponic greenhouse. The greenhouse is subject to audits twice a year to make sure students are following safety requirements for harvesting produce and tracking their cleaning and sanitation schedules.

The certification means Leilehua’s greenhouse is held to the same standards as commercial farms and can supply produce to the cafeteria like any other vendor, Freitas said. While the garden’s safety procedures have not changed much, she added, students are now required to keep a more detailed record of when they clean their tools and harvest produce.

Freitas said her students are still working with cafeteria staff to determine how the produce can fit into the school’s meal plan, but she’s hoping the process will help them understand how they can contribute to food production in Hawaii and take pride in their work.

“It can be done,” Freitas said.

This story was originally published on Honolulu Civil Beat. 

Civil Beat’s education reporting is supported by a grant from Chamberlin Family Philanthropy.

“Hawaii Grown” is funded in part by grants from the Stupski Foundation, Ulupono Fund at the Hawaii Community Foundation and the Frost Family Foundation.