Amelia Mae Steward looks on as Tahlia Williams, a weatherization worker replaces a lightbulb at her home in Canarsie.                                                                                                                                                 

On a bright, cold December morning, as a big white truck pulls up to Amelia Mae Steward’s red, brick townhouse in Canarsie, her preacher’s promise suddenly becomes true.

She had heard during a Sunday mass in September at her Baptist church in Brooklyn that there was a government program that would send out technicians to refit, or “weatherize” her home with more energy efficient insulation and technology – for free.

Skeptical at first, she went to an informational meeting and eventually decided to apply for the government’s Weatherization Assistance Program. She easily met its low-income approval criteria: the 69-year old retiree subsides on a monthly $1,180 check from the Social Security Administration, yet her gas bill alone last year totaled more than $2,500.

“I wish it would come down at least half,” she says in a booming Southern drawl that fills her whole kitchen.

Patrick Goodluck, the supervisor for the crew of five technicians who had just arrived at her home from Community Environmental Center, a weatherization contractor, gives no assurances. But they’ll aim for “as low as possible.”

Goodluck’s crew is one example of how a variety of energy conservation measures are keeping workers busy across New York during one of the most difficult economic times in the country’s history. Boosted by federal stimulus dollars, reinforced by state job training measures and local green building laws, weatherization and similar so-called “green jobs” are beginning to pulse to the economy like never before. Some see them as the beginning of a much larger industry that’s about take-off: re-fitting buildings for energy efficiency all across the US. But some critics question whether green jobs are a permanent new source of employment or a temporary boost that will fade away with stimulus spending.

The impact of stimulus spending was on full display in Steward’s home. The total materials cost for her weatherization, such as insulation, was $1,328. The total labor cost was $1,336. “This is what I have to pay?” she asks Goodluck when he shows her the invoice. “No – you don’t have to pay anything,” he answers. Weatherization is funded by the Department of Energy, which has a pool of money to give out to non-profit organizations such as the Community Environmental Center. But this year, Congress’s $787 billion stimulus bill gave the Department an additional $5 billion for the Weatherization Assistance Program – an amount is making a big difference to local weatherization providers.

“It has multiplied by probably about six times the amount of weatherization funding that we had before,” says Richard Cherry, president of the Community Environmental Center, based in Long Island City. “That has made it possible for us to obviously do a great deal more work [and] hire more people.”

His organization received $16 million in weatherization stimulus monies earlier this year and another $12.5 million just this month. Usually, the Center receives about $4 million in regular weatherization funding, Cherry says.

Goodluck, the man in charge of the Center’s crew of 22 weatherization technicians, says that by year’s end the Center will have hired about 13 or 14 additional technicians.

Ruby Carrasquillo, a resident of the Lower East Side who joined the Center on September 21st, got her job after she completed a weatherization training program at local chapter 10 of the Laborers’ International Union of North America in Chelsea. Having previously worked in sales, she is now one of two women on the Center’s weatherization crew, which is peppered with a mix of Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Barbatians, Trinidadians and other Carribbean Islanders.

“This is a green company. This is where the money is at right now. If you’re looking for a job, you need to switch over,” she says.

The Center pays beginning weatherization technicians in the low-to-mid $30 per hour range, not including benefits such as health insurance, says Cherry. That’s nearly double the $17.10 hourly wage, exclusive of benefits, that Laborers’ International chapter 10 asks for its weatherization technicians.

Myles Lennon, the chapter’s director of green operations, cautions that the Center, which employs about 16 of the union’s members, may be more of an exception than the norm. Many weatherization contractors still rely on unskilled labor for temporary positions that pay $10 to $12 per hour. He is hoping to change that by bringing skilled labor to the weatherization industry and making the $17.05 wage, or $22.10 inclusive of benefits, the standard in the market.

“If you look at the cost of raising a family in New York City, $22.10 with benefits is a real family-sustaining wage,” he says.

Green job creation isn’t just limited to weatherization technicians. David Hepinstall, executive director of the Association for Energy Affordability, an umbrella organization for weatherization providers, sees a “whole range” of positions opening up in a larger industry of re-refitting buildings for energy efficiency. Heating and cooling specialists, energy auditors, inspectors and engineers who can run complex analyses of energy systems in large commercial and residential buildings are just a few of these positions. And each requires relatively more education and training than weatherization technicians.

“Whether you come in with a GED or without, or you come in with a master’s [degree] or a PhD, there’s opportunities in this field and we do training for people at every possible education level,” says Hepinstall, who views the training as a step to a career, not just a temporary job. And these days, his organization’s classes for a nationally accredited training program are always full – a demand he is able to meet because of the stimulus funding his organization has received.

Other jobs are also being created as a side-effect of the stimulus money. Cherry says that he’s had to hire two additional accountants just to keep up with all the new demand.  “The green economy is going to fill jobs from accounting to secretaries to mechanics to engineers,” he says.

The stimulus money won’t last forever. New York is receiving $400 million from the weatherization program’s stimulus funding – enough to weatherize at least 50,000 homes, according to New York’s Division of Housing and Community Renewal, which oversees the program. But the money must be spent in the next two years, meaning that the demand for positions and job training like Carrasquillo’s will eventually temper down.

Perhaps with this in mind, some weatherization workers are taking steps to make themselves employable in other fields. Kellon Williams, 20, recently graduated from Manhattan Comprehensive High School and began working at the Center shortly thereafter. As he looks at a building in Brooklyn in which he replaced windows, he’s proud of the skills he’s picked up. And he feels good about helping the environment through the work he does. Still, he’s studying business administration part-time at the Queensborough Community College so he’s prepared to someday transition to a different career.

For those who don’t seek higher education, Laborers’ International’s Lennon thinks there will be plenty of opportunities in similar occupations. During his union chapter’s three-week-long weatherization training program, workers learn things like window replacement, caulking, sealing, duct work, using various tools and workplace safety. “A lot of those skills are easily transferrable to construction,” he says. “So if for whatever reason weatherization suddenly went away, when the housing market comes back up and there’s more development . . . all those construction skills can be put to work.“

Lennon also points to other programs that could create long-term demand for these skills. For instance, Governor Paterson recently signed into law a new program called “Green Jobs/Green New York,” that will give small loans to businesses and home owners to help them pay for weatherization services. The goal is to create 14,000 jobs, weatherize one million buildings and ultimately save New Yorkers $1 billion on their energy bills, according to the program website. And New York’s City Council this month passed a package of green building legislation that will require buildings to undergo periodic energy audits and make changes to their ongoing maintenance to make them more energy efficient.

But some policy analysts question whether “Green Jobs/Green New York” and similar programs provide more than a passing benefit to the economy. James Taylor, senior fellow for environment policy at the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based free-market think tank, concedes that “the government might be creating some short term jobs” through such measures. In the longer term, though, he believes they may be “more of a drain than a benefit on the economy” because green jobs direct resources away from more productive sectors of the economy. He cites inexpensive and efficient energy sources like coal, oil and gas as three sectors that may shrink and lose jobs, forcing people to pay more for their electricity.

“That’s going to take money out of people’s wallets,” he warns, adding that consumers could in turn spend less and slow down economic growth and job creation over the long term.

For Steward, the 69-year old retiree having her home weatherized, the opposite could well be the case. “I’m seeing my money come back to me,” she rejoices as she watches Goodluck’s crew members at work. Four toil away infusing her garage walls with layers of insulation, while a fifth is busy installing energy efficient light bulbs across her home.

And so for now the green jobs are arriving apace – and it’s beginning to show. As Goodluck drives away from Steward’s home, a radio commentator loudly celebrates the day’s big economic news: the US unemployment rate has fallen to 10 percent, down from the 26-year high of 10.2 percent reached in November.

“We’re heading in the right direction! I love it!” the commentator blares as Goodluck heads to his next site.

A bulletin board at the School for Green Careers encourages students to think about green jobs.

In a classroom decorated with student posters on deforestation and global warming, a group of 9th grade students are debating a law that would ban fast food chains from within two blocks of a school. Most of them balk at the idea of being kept from the choice teenage fare, but one student raises her hand and argues, “The mayor just wants a healthier city for the kids.”

The lesson is part of a unit on healthy, eco-friendly food in their Citizenship and Sustainability class, a required core course at the brand new Urban Assembly School for Green Careers on the Upper West Side.

“We were learning about…water…like, what was better, bottled water or tap water,” a confident student named Gina tells me, “In the end, tap water is still better.” Another student, Chris, points to a bulletin board above their heads and explains that they are covering everything pictured- water, waste, food, energy, transportation, and climate change.

This class is part of the School for Green Careers’ ambitious mission to “give students access to the 21st Century green economy by developing their problem-solving skills and their knowledge of green industries and environmental issues.”

The school, which is a joint venture of the city Department of Education and the Urban Assembly, a non-profit organization that aims to improve urban education for underserved middle and high school children, was created to fill a need for “green-collar” workers created mainly by the Mayor’s PlaNYC.

“PlaNYC creates jobs,” said Ozgem Ornektekin, the Department of Education’s Director of Sustainability, “This school will prepare students for those jobs.” Ornektekin explained that while education officials are not looking to create a separate curriculum for environmental education, they are finding ways to incorporate it across other parts of the curricula. The school for green careers is acting as a model for how the city will prepare students for green jobs, she said.

And the school may have emerged at just the right time. According to the NYC Green Collar Jobs Roadmap, which was published this October by Urban Agenda and the Center for American Progress, the New York City economy is creating thousands of green-collar jobs through PlaNYC initiatives such as cutting greenhouse gas emissions through building retrofits and weatherization, planting trees, and remediating contaminated properties.

“At the moment, however,” the roadmap stated, ”New York City does not have the training, recruitment, pre-employment and job-readiness infrastructure and business services in place to reach our ambitious sustainability goals, expand our green-collar workforce, and further develop the city’s emerging, high-growth green sectors.”

That’s where the School for Green Careers comes in. While the 100 9th graders attending the school are currently all taking the same three core courses- Literacy (Reading/Writing), Integrated Algebra, and Citizenship & Sustainability- they will later choose from two tracks within the school: green buildings or green spaces.

The students who choose the building track will focus on careers such as building maintenance engineering, energy auditing, building retrofitting, and green roof installation. Those in green spaces will be pointed towards jobs like landscape horticulture and architecture, urban farming, forestry management and brownfield remediation.

The students are also currently taking electives, many of which are environmentally themed, such as sustainable eating/cooking, gardening, and a mentoring program in which 14 students communicate weekly with mentors in the City Parks Department.

Alexandra Rathman-Noonan, the school principal, was especially excited about the gardening prospect, since the school has full access to a previously neglected garden on the corner of 84th St. and Amsterdam Ave. “It has been in disrepair for a while,” she said, “we’re hoping to revitalize it.”

But the School for Green Careers, which is also a demonstration site for an effort to revamp and improve the city’s technical schools called the Mayoral task Force on Career and Technical Education Innovation, also faces considerable challenges in carrying out its ambitious plan.

During class students shouted to each other across the room while the teacher spoke, talked amongst themselves, wandered into class an hour late and completely ignored the lesson for more captivating activities like ‘rock, paper, scissor’.

“I can see the focus just disappearing into the air,” one teacher told them as she attempted, unsuccessfully, to rouse a sleeping student. Her struggle to keep the students on task demonstrates the complex reality of schools such as this one, which have historically been dumping sites for teenagers who have not done well in traditional learning environments.

“We serve a very high-need population,” the principal explained. According to Rathman-Noonan, more than 20 percent of the students are special education, and the same percentage are English-language learners. She estimated that close to 90 percent of the students qualify for free lunch, meaning their families live at or below the poverty level.

In a 2008 report, The Mayoral Task Force reported that approximately 110,000 students were enrolled in the career high schools or programs, and 47 percent of those programs earned a C or below on the city’s school report cards.

The career schools tended to have lower graduation rates than the citywide rate, and the students enrolled came primarily from minority communities. In 2008, only 5 percent of the students enrolled in these technical schools were white.

The task force was chaired by former NYC Mayor David Dinkins and Sy Sternberg, the Chairman and CEO of NY Life, and their recommendations included meeting 21st Century standards, expanding paths to graduation, engaging industry leadership, preparing students for postsecondary success and increasing access and opportunity.

Within expanding paths to graduation, they laid out a specific plan for model sites, stating that through the creation of career schools based on a new design, they would “model the opportunities, challenges, and outcomes deriving from intense industry partnerships and state policy innovation.”

“The emphasis here is really getting kids into the workforce,” said the Urban Assembly’s President and Founder, Richard, Kahan, “It’s not about graduating kids who know a lot about the environment.”

In this regard, the larger Urban Assembly model of using a theme to help students make connections between what they’re learning in the academic world and the real world outside is crucial, according to Rathman-Noonan. “As a career and technical school, this school takes that one step further,” she said, “Many of our partners are potential employers for our students.”

But how will all of this really play out over the next four years as the school grows to its full size and delves into the more in-depth portion of its curriculum? How will they manage to prepare students who can barely sit still in class for immediate entry into green-collar jobs with specialized skills or for college-level training?

Rathman-Noonan acknowledged that it is a tall order, but said that there are two specific ways the School for Green Careers will tackle this issue and become a true model for both career and technical education and green-collar job training.

First, they will focus on what she calls “higher-order skills” that are consistent across the workforce and college. “So, thinking, collaborative group work, problem solving, research…those types of skills that once students have them it makes them a good learner in no matter what context,” she explained.

In the classroom the desks were pushed together in clusters of three or four, and students worked together to write speeches debating whether the fast food ban was justified or paternalistic. They were instructed to agree on a side and then to support their argument with relevant facts. They elected one person from their group to present the speech, and then the rest of the class evaluated each presenter in categories such as the quality of their argument, posture and eye contact.

Second, while most traditional technical schools were very large, the School for Green Careers has the advantage of being a small school. “We’re really building on personalization and knowing students well,” Rathman-Noonan said, who has everyone at the school, including the students, call her “A.J.”

In fact, all of the teachers are addressed by their first names. At one point, when Rathman-Noonan encountered a student wearing a hat (which is not allowed) in the hallway, she put her arm around his shoulder and personally picked the hat off of his head. He wriggled from her and shrieked, “Aww…come on, A.J,” in a voice that conveyed an extreme degree of familiarity.

This early in the game, however, it is unclear whether familiarity and personalization combined with a new approach to technical and academic training will be enough to prepare the students at the School for Green Careers for successful green-collar jobs in the future.

For now, Rathman-Noonan, said, “Our goal is to have every student graduate, if not in 4 years, than in 5…and for the students to be assessed as college ready, all of them…and then to have a specific post-secondary plan.”

The Applied Research Center, a California-based think tank focused on justice issues, has selected PlaNYC one of five programs to serve as case studies of how local community activists can successfully promote racial, economic and gender equality in green job creation.

“Hopefully, it’s a story we can tell about how labor and community activists won equity in PlaNYC,” Yvonne Liu, the project’s coordinator, told The Green Standard.

One of the reasons the Center chose New York is “because there’s not a lot of community input and participation right now in the planning process,” Liu said. However, many community groups are now beginning to organize to give their input, she added.

The case study will examine what campaign tactics, policies, equity measures and principles they are using to make their voices heard.

“New York City is a compelling case study because, if it works in New York, just like if it works in Los Angeles, there’s real implications that it has for [it] to work in another place as well,” Liu said.

A Los Angeles case study will be unveiled on November 18th. New York’s case study is due out in late December or early January, Liu said.