The routing and capture of on-site rainwater is a key concern for students as young as kindergarteners at the Hazel Wolf K–8 E-STEM School in Seattle. Founded in 2009 and named for a 20th-century green activist and Seattle resident, it’s the city’s first environmentally focused public school. And, by design and serendipity, its own sustainable building and grounds have become fodder for teaching. “Curiosity about the surroundings is something we really encourage,” says Joe Bailey-Fogarty, who coordinates the E-STEM (environmental science-technology-engineering-and-math) program. “Observing closely, exploring and discovering how systems work is vital to the learning here.”
In an earlier location, the school had 18 acres, traversed by a stream, but that was a temporary arrangement. A 3.2-acre triangular site, about nine miles north of downtown, was available for Hazel Wolf’s permanent home. This leftover parcel was complicated by its adjacencies: an artery with banal, awkwardly skewed, low-rise apartment buildings interspersed with storefronts, and, facing the other edges, mostly neighborhoods with single-family houses.
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