Wrapped in Hope: Creighton Preparatory High School

Happy Tuesday and welcome to the sixth and final installment of our series: Wrapped in Hope. This issue features Creighton Preparatory School, which is the school I currently attend.

Perhaps the most significant project that has been accomplished at Prep that has forwarded Prep’s commitment to preserving the environment is the establishment of solar panels atop Carmen and Don Leahy Stadium. This stadium serves as a venue for events of all kinds, and rarely will you see the stadium not being occupied by anyone.

For this reason, Ryan Quinn (a former Creighton Prep Sustainability Club student leader), decided to establish solar panels here. Ryan saw the enormous volume of traffic surrounding this building, and decided that the establishment of solar panels in this location would best increase awareness and further education about climate change. To this date, Creighton Prep has saved 35,911.4lbs of CO2 emissions from the environment—which is the equivalent of planting 271 trees. The panels also provide power to two EV (electric vehicle) chargers, promoting the use of these vehicles.

To further the promotion of environmentally friendly transportation, Creighton Prep has also installed bike racks on its campus. The racks are used by several students and a few teachers each day. Amazingly, even in the winter months some students still ride their bikes to school.

Across Mike Hogan Drive is Prep’s Lannon Learning Commons—a place where students can socialize and study when they aren’t in class. The construction of The Commons required a new HVAC system. Prep installed an efficient and eco-friendly machine to this portion of the building.

To further reduce the CO2 emissions that Prep contributes to in our atmosphere, Creighton Prep has begun to replace the lights in the school with LED lights (which are much more efficient, energy-wise). Creighton Prep is also a zero-waste school, complete with a fully operational compost and recycling program.

Creighton Prep has also worked to establish a stormwater catchment garden. This project was funded by the city with a grant in order to slow storm water volume to Cole Creek. Cole Creek’s banks had negatively impacted soil erosion on neighboring residential yards.

I am the student leader of Creighton Prep’s Sustainability Club and a few things we’ve managed to accomplish this semester have been creating recycling guides (feel free to download) that will be hung up in every classroom at the beginning of next semester. We’ve created Instagram posts informing people how to recycle a specific item every week (or not recycle it). We’ve also presented to juniors in Catholic Social Teaching about what Prep is doing for the environment and what these students can do too. Although this newsletter is not affiliated with Creighton Prep, the advent of its creation was in order to advance education at Creighton Prep about the environment, among other places as well.

Some hopes we have for next year include calculating Prep’s annual carbon emissions and replacing the Jay Mart’s (Creighton Prep’s school store) plastic bags with reusable or recyclable bags. As Duchesne is doing, we hope to educate the freshman class on the basics of recycling, composting, and sustainability at Creighton Prep and in the world beyond.

Thank you for reading this series by The Leaflet. Our hope is that you learned a lot and have been uplifted by the incredible progress of others in our community. Happy Holidays.

~ Seamus Haney