Setting a National Standard
CHPS is leading a national movement to improve student performance and the entire educational experience by building the best possible learning environments. To achieve this goal, we maintain the nation’s most authoritative criteria for healthy, environmentally sustainable, cost effective school buildings.
The CHPS Criteria for new construction and major renovation is designed to help school districts in every community across the country reduce operating costs; achieve higher student performance; increase daily attendance; retain quality teachers and staff; be energy, water and resource efficient; and minimize environmental impact.
At CHPS, we know that collaboration across stakeholders combined with locally appropriate standards and best practices are the most effective means to achieve high performance buildings. That's why our approach is to offer criteria adapted to specific geographic areas in partnership with an organization located in the state or area. We facilitate this process by starting with a national set of standards developed by our National Technical Committee, called the Core Criteria, that forms the basis for new adaptations and updates of state and regional CHPS Criteria.
Criteria for New Construction and Major Renovation
CHPS has criteria available for every state. If a local adapation has not been adopted in your area, our national version, US-CHPS is available.
Custom CHPS Criteria are available for projects in:
- California (CA-CHPS)
- Hawaii (HI-CHPS)
- Texas (TX-CHPS)
- Virginia (VA-CHPS)
Licensee versions of the CHPS Criteria are available for:
- Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont (NE-CHPS)
- Washington (Washington Sustainable Schools Protocol)
National criteria with local flexibility are available for the remaining 38 states:
- National (US-CHPS)
Archived adaptations:
- Colorado (now using US-CHPS)
- Massachusetts (now part of NE-CHPS)
- New York (now part of NE-CHPS)
Additional criteria specific to Relocatable and Prefabricated Buildings:
As of June 2019, state or regional entities or other parties interested in developing or updating a customized version of the CHPS Criteria can now use version 3 of the CHPS Core Criteria Template for Local Adaptation. The latest version contains fully updated reference standards, a new, modern format, and new credits recognizing drinking water quality, climate resilience and adaptation, composting and food waste, and additional enhancements to ventilation and a high quality indoor environment. More information is available on the Core Criteria page and by contacting us at info@chps.net.
