School’s out for summer! Well, not quite as Tuesday is the second-to-last day of public school for Cobb County children. But the kids will be out early today: high-schoolers at 11:30 a.m.; middle-schoolers at 12:30 p.m.; and the elementary children at 1:30 p.m.

We’ll be cleaning out the education notebook over the course of the next few days and we begin by focusing on students at King Springs Elementary learning about and promoting clean air through a special campaign at the school.

Principal Linda Keeney, school nurse Margaret Jourden, along with Rebecca Watts-Hull and Natasha Herbert of Mothers & Others for Clean Air, collaborated to incorporate an air quality awareness program into the everyday activities at the Reed Road school.

Already a participating in the Georgia Clean Air Schools program, the school flies color-coded flags indicating the air quality index for the day.

Keeney and the fifth grade team of news anchors on KTV mention the daily index during each morning’s closed-circuit TV broadcast, helping the student body understand the impact of air quality on health and well-being.

Lisa McKinley, an environmental scientist with the EPA, is also a parent of twins at King Springs and has worked closely with the school to educate parents and staff on asthma and other environmental health-related risks.