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WIN!! Schoolyard Greening and Watershed
Language Added to Bills
Thanks to AVFCA Lobbying Efforts!

In 2023, A Voice for Choice Advocacy sponsored SB 499 - The Cool Schools Act - authored Senator Menjivar, which would have mitigated extreme heat and air pollution in all public schools by replacing heat producing synthetic surfaces with cooler natural surfaces, and tree canopies.  While this bill did not pass due to CA's budget issues, the hundreds of meetings our legislative team had with Assembly and Senate offices and committee consultants, educating them on these issues has had an impact realized in recent bill amendments. 

Two Bond Acts were introduced in 2023 and passed by the legislature securing their place on the 2024 November Ballot.  AB 247 relates to financing the modernization, repair, and safety of facilities in K-12 schools and local community colleges and AB 638 relates to financing climate resiliency and flood protection in CA.  When both of these Bond Acts were introduced last year, AVFCA met with legislative offices to request that they be expanded to include the removal of synthetic surfaces, schoolyard greening, increasing tree canopies and ensuring watershed protection on school grounds, so that SB 499's goals could be fully funded.  A few weeks ago prior to these passing out of the legislature and being approved for the 2024 November Ballot, they were amended to specifically include language that would allow schools to access funding to realize these goals.  Furthermore, Senator Menjivar has continued to champion Green Schoolyards this year with SB 1091, which allow schools to be less restrictive on some building requirements when upgrading schoolyards to become more ecologically healthy and giving children more natural outdoor spaces, using similar descriptions of natural and unnatural projects as to what AVFCA had advocated for last year.  AVFCA also recognizes Green Schoolyards of America and many other organizations who also support and further these efforts in California. 

For more information and to Empower Yourself on planting trees or collecting water in your own backyard and community, go to the A Voice for Choice Advocacy’s website: https://avoiceforchoiceadvocacy.org/tree-planting/ and https://avoiceforchoiceadvocacy.org/collect-rainwater/

Over the past 9 years, A Voice for Choice Advocacy has established itself as the leading legislative organization lobbying in the California Capitol for your health rights.  For those less familiar with AVFCA's prior years legislative successes, AVFCA sponsored AB 1989 (Garcia) in 2020, which requires all ingredients to be labeled on menstrual products; SB 499 (Menjivar) in 2023, which would have increased tree canopies and reduced asphalt and plastic surfaces in schools (halted due to budget issues); and SB 1266 (Limon) this year which will ban bisphenol from all children's drinking and sucking products.  AVFCA is the only Health Freedom organization in California that has had such success in getting bills authored, and specifically all by strong Democrat legislators.  Sponsoring bills allows AVFCA to build stronger relationships with legislators and their staff, so that when there are bad bills we can work with those same offices and be considered a reliable, professional, reasonable and research based organization.   

If you found this information helpful and appreciate the work A Voice for Choice Advocacy is doing, please support us by making a donation today.

Together we can make change happen!

C

Christina Hildebrand
President/Founder
A Voice for Choice Advocacy, Inc.
[email protected]
www.AVoiceForChoiceAdvocacy.org