If green office buildings provide important benefits, like decreased absenteeism and improved productivity of the workers inside, it only makes sense that schools and students reap these same rewards. Surely every parent would love for their kids to have fewer sick days.

To further this concept, Global Green, USA is hosting the 2007 Green Schools Symposium on Thursday, June 14th. You might remember Global Green from it’s pre-Oscar bash in February, which featured the likes of Orlando Bloom and Leonardo DiCaprio. This event, however, has a slightly different (and less famous) audience.

The Symposium will provide a forum for discussing case studies, new research on the benefits of green schools, and new design tools to help create resource-efficient, healthy, and productive schools. This year, the conference features a special focus on charter schools. The one-day event will be held at the California Science Center.

Global Green, USA, an affiliate of Green Cross (founded by former Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbechev), works to address three of the greatest challenges facing humanity:

• Stemming global climate change by creating green buildings and cities,
• Eliminating weapons of mass destruction that threaten lives and the environment, and
• Providing clean, safe drinking water for the 2.4 billion people who lack such access

Another event with an educational focus is planned slightly further afield later this month. The University of California, Santa Barbara’s 6th Annual Sustainability Conference is coming up June 24 – 27. With a spotlight on the best practices in sustainability at California campuses, the event brings together representatives of the UC campuses and other colleges, along with government, business, and non-profit entities. Schools and college campuses use a lot of resources, so efforts to make them more efficient are certain to have a big impact.

As the home of the Donald Bren School of Environmental Science & Management and a winner of a 2006 “Flex Your Power” award for Energy Efficiency, UCSB appears to be a leader in sustainable campuses. It even has a student-initiated foundation, The Green Initiative Fund (TGIF), which funds solar energy, water conservation, waste reduction, and other projects that reduce the universities' impact on the environment. Way to go, UCSB!