CHAPPAQUA
DANNY WEINGART said he recently spent a week standing outside his middle school with a sign encouraging classmates to ride the bus because of his concerns about global warming. If the more dire predictions come true, he worries that his favorite cities could flood.
“Personally, I don’t enjoy swimming everywhere,” Danny, who is 11, said jokingly as he and more than 20 other sixth graders at Seven Bridges Middle School met in a technology classroom at lunchtime to discuss a weekend trash cleanup project.
Danny belongs to a school club called Kids Against Pollution, which conducted a weeklong protest leading up to Earth Day. Its goal was to reduce the number of cars dropping off students at the school in Chappaqua, a village of fewer than 10,000 with a median household income of more than $163,000.
For five days, club members car-pooled to the school by 6:45 a.m. and counted the number of cars entering and leaving the parking lot. They held up signs with slogans like “Hop on the Bus, Gus” and “Make a New Plan, Stan.”
“It reduced the number of cars we had coming to school by the end of the week,” said Donna Raskin, 53, the principal of the school, which has 600 pupils in the fifth through eighth grades.
According to statistics that club members compiled, 206 cars dropped off students on Monday, April 14. The number crested at 213 the next day and dropped to 169 by that Friday.
The club fell short of its goal of reducing the number of cars driving to school each day by 50 percent, said Andrew Lafortezza, 11, president of the fifth- and sixth-grade classes. But he said that at a sports practice during the week of the protests, several parents said they had to drive their children to school because the bus did not reach them.
“That really shows that parents are aware of the problem,” Andrew said. “And awareness was another one of our goals.”
The club’s adviser, Mike Debellis, 34, a technology teacher at Seven Bridges for six years, raised the idea of a club to Andrew last October. Andrew responded enthusiastically.
“He wouldn’t leave me alone,” Mr. Debellis said. “He and his friends were in my classroom every other lunch.”
With a club core consisting of Andrew’s friends, word quickly spread, and pupils were so enthusiastic that Mr. Debellis had to cap membership at around 20 because his classroom was not big enough for all of them to meet during lunch periods.
Most members said they were worried about global warming. Aaron Kohn, 11, said that he had watched the movie “Waterworld,” about a future in which the polar ice caps have melted and most of the planet is underwater, and then researched on the Internet reasons the earth could flood.
When he read about global warming, Aaron said, he got scared.
Sarah Jane Weil, 11, said she is an animal lover and was upset by predictions that in her lifetime polar bears might become extinct as a result of global warming.
Olivia Sacker, 11, said she used to want to be a veterinarian when she grows up but now wants to be an environmentalist because she is worried about the health of the planet.
Club members brainstormed about what kind of project they could do to further the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. That was when they decided to protest outside the school in order to get more classmates car-pooling and riding the bus.
Club members said they had not anticipated the reaction to their protest.
“A lot of kids blew us off, some even flipped us off,” said Zac Gelfand, 11, the club’s president.
But despite the occasional negative responses, the club members were impressed with the positive feedback they got, mainly from parents and teachers.
“One teacher said to me that this was the best protest he’d ever seen,” said Kate Hawthorne, 11.
Chris Stasi, 35, another technology teacher at the school, said that because the club members stood up for their principles, they learned lessons that cannot be taught in a classroom.
“That was a real situation they were in,” he said. “Trying to express what you really feel and your beliefs.”
In addition to a trash cleanup on May 3, the club has set its sights on selling environmentally friendly T-shirts and bumper stickers to raise money for its “Totally Awesome” award, given to the most environmentally friendly business in Westchester; and helping a cousin of Zac’s start a Kids Against Pollution club at his middle school in Florida.
Mr. Debellis said he was proudest that the students learned that their actions could make a difference. He is optimistic that having the knowledge that they can make a change, along with youthful exuberance, could make Kids Against Pollution a powerful force for environmental change.
“Because what’s more annoying than an 11-year-old kid?” Mr. Debellis said. “They’re not used to people telling them no.”