This thesis examines what practices schools and school districts need to adopt if they want to apply sustainable design principles to their new schools and the benefits these design practices offer school communities. The paper argues that school districts will benefit from these design principles, and that these benefits will occur because sustainable design and construction decisions lead to the creation of learning environments that are environmentally healthy for occupants, operationally efficient, and site sensitive to the natural and community environment. Also argued is that school districts are best served by being proactive in their embrace of sustainable design principles, and that the adoption of these concepts and processes will be most successful if they involve a collaborative and interdisciplinary project management model that uses project teams and the community throughout the design and construction process. Appendices contain a report on the impact of inadequate school facilities on student learning and the study's interview questions. (Contains 64 references.) (GR)