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California School Garden Coalition

2025

SB 341 and the groundwork for 2026

Our first bill did not pass. It built the support and the relationships behind the 2026 budget win.

SB 341 (Pérez, 2025)

135+

Organizations signed on

4

Coauthors, both parties

SB 341, the Delaine Eastin Instructional School Garden Bill, would have restarted California's unused, unfunded Instructional School Garden Program. The bill itself would only have set up a working group to write the grant rules. Money for garden teaching and upkeep was meant to come later, in a second phase.

The bill earned unanimous, bipartisan approval in the Senate Education and Agriculture committees. On May 23, 2025 the Senate Appropriations Committee, which reviews what bills cost, held it back, and it went no further that year. The committee priced the bill from an old estimate, though its only cost was a working group. It was a hard budget year. Under the Senate's $50,000 threshold, even small startup costs drew scrutiny. The Governor's office had said it would back no new programs, and bills for the Los Angeles fires were competing for space.

The authors were Senator Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Alhambra), Senator Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh (R-Yucaipa), Senator Susan Rubio (D-Baldwin Park), Senator Henry Stern (D-Calabasas) and Senator Monique Limón (D-Santa Barbara). The bill changed as it moved. It was named for Delaine Eastin, the former State Superintendent who championed a garden in every school. An amendment recommended that community organizations be able to apply on their own, not only through a district. Composting joined what school gardens teach. CAL FIRE joined the working group.

Senator Pérez's office posted the April 2025 press conference with Senator Ochoa Bogh at sd25.senate.ca.gov.

A large group of advocates and children holds a painted banner on the State Capitol steps.
Advocacy Day on the Capitol steps, Sacramento, April 9, 2025.

How the bill came to be

We started with a legislation proposal built on our research and case studies and on conversations with partners. We shared it with nearly 30 legislative offices before four coauthors signed on. Senator Lena Gonzalez's office sent our draft to Legislative Counsel, the office that writes bills, and the bill that came back matched our proposal.

We consulted:

  • The California Campaign for Outdoor Learning
  • Coalition members with advocacy experience, among them the Center for Ecoliteracy, Children & Nature Network, The Nature Conservancy, NextGen Policy, Ten Strands, TreePeople and Trust for Public Land
  • School districts, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Upland and Santa Clara
  • The California Department of Education, the California Department of Food and Agriculture, CalRecycle and the Oregon Department of Education
  • Green Schoolyards America

We met with the offices of Senators Ben Allen, Josh Becker, Christopher Cabaldon, Steven Choi, Dave Cortese, Lena Gonzalez, John Laird, Monique Limón, Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh, Sasha Renée Pérez and Scott Wiener, and Assemblymembers David Alvarez, Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, Marc Berman, Isaac Bryan, Jesse Gabriel, Robert Garcia, Josh Lowenthal, Tina McKinnor, Al Muratsuchi and Gail Pellerin, and with legislative consultants from the Appropriations, Education and budget committees and the office of the Senate President pro Tempore. Those meetings refined the proposal and sized the costs of each phase, and out of them came the draft bill language.

Summer 2025

The Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund requests

Once SB 341 stalled, we turned to the state's climate fund, the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, with two budget requests. The first asked for $25 million right away, for 2025-26. The second asked that 1% of the fund go to environmental education each year from 2030 to 2045, with $25 million a year for school garden learning. Both would have revived the Instructional School Garden Program at the California Department of Food and Agriculture. Our argument: garden lessons are a low-cost way to teach environmental literacy and cut emissions through the food students choose.

Neither request found the legislative champion it needed. The work informed the budget approach we took in 2026.

April 9, 2025

Advocacy Day 2025

143+

Registered advocates

34

Meetings with Senators and Assemblymembers

Students, educators and advocates from across California came to Sacramento for garden-based education, outdoor learning and farm-to-school funding. We met with 17 Senators and 17 Assemblymembers or their offices. Students told legislators what their school gardens mean to them. Senators Pérez and Ochoa Bogh held a press conference on the bill.

Students plant along a garden bed while camera crews film.
The SB 341 garden event, Advocacy Day 2025.

2022 to 2025

How we formed and made our case

  1. Phase 1

    Concept, listening tour, leaders

    Exploratory meetings with partners, then interviews and surveys of school garden organizations, then a coordinating agency and a leadership team. Partners convened in August 2023.

  2. Phase 2

    Mission, plan and projects

    A shared vision, mission, goals and structure. The case-making projects. The website, newsletters and regular meetings, and the first legislative conversations.

  3. Phase 3

    Strategy and the proposal

    Meetings with legislators and agencies, endorsements for the concept proposal, and the request for a bill.

  4. Phase 4

    SB 341 and Advocacy Day

    Letters of support, outreach to legislators, coalition meetings and the first Advocacy Day in Sacramento.

The timeline continues