Clean Air Allies is a nonprofit organization dedicated to ensuring that all schoolchildren, school workers, and their broader communities have access to the benefits of clean air as an issue of educational, environmental, and health justice. We center the perspective of parents/guardians, families, and others on the ground who want the best for our children and those who work with them in our Pre-kindergarten to Grade 12 (PK-12) schools.

Our vision. We envision a future where all schools embrace indoor air quality (IAQ) as a vital tool to elevate health, inclusion, and learning and provide indoor environments that support the thriving and resilience of their students, staff, and broader communities.

Students spend an estimated 15,000+ hours of their lives at PK-12 schools, mostly inside, staff even more. In many aging school facilities, and even newer ones, IAQ is poor and undermines rather than supports student and staff physical and mental health, attendance, and learning. More extreme weather, wildfire smoke, and other pollution mean even more time indoors and worse baseline IAQ, as well as more frequent closures. All are affected. But especially susceptible to adverse effects from IAQ problems like germs, pollutants, and extreme temperatures/humidity are people with disabilities, living in underserved communities, and belonging to groups socially vulnerable to climate threats.

We have a tremendous opportunity to promote individual and collective thriving by recognizing that air, like food and water, is a basic human need and creating healthier, safer, more resilient school environments for all.

Our strategy. To improve PK-12 school IAQ, we pursue a unique mix of grassroots-up and top-down strategies:

• We aim to build the capacity of school district-level advocates, who can make IAQ a local priority, through resources, training, and opportunities for connection and mutual support.
• We work to raise general public, as well as education decisionmaker, awareness about why school IAQ is essential to health, learning, inclusion, and resilience.
• We seek to identify, improve, and promote better practice around existing compliance requirements related to school facilities and student and staff health, safety, and wellness.
• We engage in analysis and advocacy around policy and funding for school IAQ.

Through these complementary strategies, we believe we can make clean air a durable reality in all schools.

Our story. Clean Air Allies’ origins trace to fall 2023, when our founders, California parents advocating for clean air in their own children’s schools, came together, formed a statewide grassroots network, and began to think about change on a bigger scale.

While Clean Air Allies has always operated in a nonprofit manner, in March 2025, we obtained more formal nonprofit status by transitioning to a fiscally sponsored project of Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs (SEE), a nonprofit public charity exempt from federal income tax under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Fiscal sponsorship allows Clean Air Allies to collect tax-deductible donations and apply for grants, as well as learn and receive administrative support from SEE’s experienced staff, while we build our organization and focus on clean air outreach and advocacy.

Our community. Since our start, we’ve prioritized reaching out to, learning from, and allying with a variety of different stakeholders, including:

• grassroots parent, teacher, and community advocates;
• health, education, environmental, disability, civil rights, and policy nonprofits;
• labor and trades unions;
• industry interests and professional associations;
• school district, county office of education, agency, and legislative staff; and
• academic researchers focused on climate, economics, health, biosecurity, and IAQ dynamics/systems.

We’d love for you to join us as a clean air ally!

Our focus. To date, our efforts have focused on California, our home as well as that of around 12 percent of U.S. public schoolchildren, who attend schools of many shapes and sizes in diverse communities and geographies. But much of our work has broad resonance, and we consider ourselves part of a national and global clean air movement.

We previously used the name California Alliance for Clean Air in Schools.

For more information, please contact us at info@cleanairallies.org.