Westminster's West Middle School has been named a Maryland Green School.

The green school awards program is sponsored by the Maryland Association for Environmental and Outdoor Education.  According to its Web site, it recognizes public and private schools that:

1. Use their school site and curricular instruction to prepare students to understand and act on current and future environmental challenges facing all Marylanders.

2. Model environmental best-management practices in building and landscape design, operation and maintenance.

3. Build and maintain partnerships with the local community to enhance environmental learning and to design and implement projects and programs that result in a healthier environment.

West Middle Principal Tom Hill said the school's effort began by bringing together several environmental programs that had been running separately.  Their environmental contributions include "bluebird boxes" - birdhouses - that students (with some help from William Winchester Elementary and others) built, to be donated to the community; collecting old cell phones to be given to battered and abused women for emergency situations; and a school recycling program for electronics, paper and plastic.

The distinction comes after two years of documentation of their green efforts, said Nancy Merrill, executive director of the association.  This has been a banner year for the awards, she said, with an unprecedented 36 schools selected.  West Middle and the others will be certified as green for the next three school years.

To read more about students' efforts at West Middle, check out their green school page.

Curious about other Maryland green schools?  Check out the list on the association's Web site.