The U.S. Department of Education last year brought a quiet end to the Green Ribbon Schools program, which had for more than a decade honored schools for their sustainability work.
In the absence of that federal recognition, some states are stepping up to continue recognizing educators for their work to reduce schools’ environmental impact and engage students in hands-on environmental education.
One of those states is Wisconsin, where the state education department established a new state-level honor that supersedes other sustainability awards in an effort to make up for the loss of the federal recognition.
Victoria Rydberg-Nania, the agency’s environmental education consultant, spoke with Education Week about the end of the Green Ribbon Schools program, Wisconsin’s new state-level award, and why honoring districts’ sustainability efforts still matters.
The federal Education Department didn’t respond to a request for information about the end of the Green Ribbon program, which was confirmed to Education Week by officials and advocates who have worked with schools that received the recognition and have started working with leaders on creating state-level environmental honors for schools.
This interview with Rydberg-Nania has been edited for length and clarity.
How long did Wisconsin schools participate in the Green Ribbon program, and why was it important?
We participated in the U.S. Department of Education Green Ribbon Schools program since its inception in 2012. During that time, we had 47 school districts and early-learning centers recognized by the U.S. Department of Education.
One of the reasons that we felt that it was important to participate is we at that time [when the Green Ribbon program started] had a program running for 10 years called the Green and Healthy Schools Wisconsin program. It was our state-level recognition, co-coordinated with our Wisconsin department of natural resources.
We had these schools that were already participating in that program, and we said, ‘Let’s use the U.S. Department of Education and the Green Ribbon Schools program to bring more visibility and recognition for what we’re recognizing these schools for at the state level.’
How did you find out about the end of the Green Ribbon program?
In the fall of 2024, we were preparing our nominees, getting them ready for a submission on Feb. 15 [of 2025] to the U.S. Department of Education, which has been our practice for many years prior.
Up to that date, the application portal had not opened and then finally, one day, it opened, and I submitted our nominees. Then I got a message from the U.S. Department of Education that said, ‘Oh, that wasn’t supposed to be open. Please hold off on submitting your nominees until further notice.’
And we never got further notice, so it kind of became clear to us that we needed to do something else.
How did your state education department step in to fill that gap?
We wanted to recognize that [schools had] already filled out this rigorous application that had been reviewed by two different review teams—within our agency and externally with different experts.
We wanted to honor that time.
So we established our own state-level award, one level above our Green and Healthy Schools award, to take the place of the U.S. Department of Education Green Ribbon Schools recognition.
We call that our Wisconsin Stewardship and Sustainability award, and that is now kind of our equivalent for that [federal recognition].
We’re hoping to continue really keeping the interest in this alive. Should the U.S. Department of Education ever reopen the program, we’d like to continue to participate.
How are schools eligible for that higher recognition? What sets them apart?
Our Green and Healthy Schools Wisconsin program has four different levels schools can achieve.
They start at the Sprout level when they first enter the program and earn different badges.
They grow through Seedling, Sapling, and finally, to the Sugar Maple level. We have 12 core badges that the schools or districts have to earn before they get to that Sugar Maple level.
The Wisconsin Stewardship and Sustainability Award is for those schools that go above and beyond those 12 badges.
We actually have 25 badges that are available to earn. So, we look at how many additional badges have those schools earned, what is the duration and intensity of their participation of wrapping this into their whole school cultures, and so on. We look at a number of different factors, but it’s going above and beyond those requirements for our Sugar Maple level.
We still align those requirements with what we would have submitted to the U.S. Department of Education for Green Ribbon Schools.
What has it meant to your schools to continue receiving this type of recognition in the absence of the federal honor?
When our nominees were going through the review process and we shared with them that we didn’t think this was going to happen with the Department of Education’s Green Ribbon Schools, and we were going to instead reward them in this other way, they were, of course, disappointed that they weren’t going to get that national recognition.
But they were so incredibly grateful that they could still receive recognition because they want to share their stories.
Even just this last week, I called our 2026 awardees to let them know that they had been selected for this recognition, and they were so incredibly excited and honored that they would get even the state-level recognition and be able to share that story.
There is still just a lot of desire for schools to want to get that recognition for this good work that they’re doing that the public doesn’t always see. This program allows that visibility.
People don’t often think about anything beyond the core academic subjects and spaces when they think about schools, so this really allows school districts to highlight those extra things that they’re doing that are really making the education environment an awesome place to be for students.
