CHPS and LEED

Course Overview

The Collaborative for High Performance Schools (CHPS), a California-based nonprofit organization focused on improving the overall performance of California schools, has developed a set of criteria that define a high performance school. The criteria are most useful as a goal setting and planning tool and are flexible enough to allow designers to deliver a CHPS school while managing the regional, district, and site-specific constraints of the school design.

The CHPS Criteria are similar to the U.S. Green Buildings Council's (USGBC) LEEDT 2.0 Rating System. The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program was developed in the mid-1990s by members of the USGBC to recognize achievements and promote expertise in green building. The CHPS Criteria, developed a few years later, has the same goals. But unlike LEED, CHPS focuses only on school building design. A school qualifying for CHPS certification may contain many of the elements needed for LEEDT certification, but there is no interchangeability between the two systems.

This course focuses on the content and structure of the CHPS Criteria as a means to introduce a conceptual framework for planning and setting goals for a high performance school. While some of the specifics of the CHPS Criteria are applicable only in California, the basic format and principles can serve as useful guides for high performance school design anywhere in the United States.

The course is worth 1 hour of continuing education credit in the area of Health, Saftety, Welfare.