Texas Trees Foundation Cool Schools program aims to plant 80-100 trees at every Dallas ISD elementary school in order to create cooler, greener, and healthier school campuses. Cool Schools connect students and teachers to nature by planting trees and creating fun and engaging outdoor experiential learning areas.

Cool School Neighborhood Parks, a growing branch of the Cool Schools Program, alleviates areas within “park deserts.” Park deserts are areas that do not have a park within a 10-minute walk. Cool School Neighborhood Parks, thanks to a partnership with the Dallas Parks and Recreation Department and the support from generous sponsors, opens the park to the community during after-school hours. Studio Outside has been actively working with Texas Trees to create a successful Cool Schools Neighborhood Park program: from creating initial fundraising collateral to engaging with teachers and students to design site-and-community-specific playgrounds, walking trails, and outdoor classrooms.

With endorsement from the leadership of the Dallas Independent School District (DISD), the Texas Trees Foundation is seeking $2.5 million in funding over five years to plant 10,000 trees at elementary schools across the district. Studio Outside, with the Texas Tree Foundation, provides detailed landscape plans specific to each campus, with individualized site recommendations— enabling DISD to manage its tree resources better, allocate maintenance, develop budgets, and prioritize long-term needs. Adopting the principle of “no child left inside,” this initiative seeks to bring classrooms outdoors—providing hands-on learning experiences, benefiting student health and wellbeing, and allowing exploration of the natural world.