The winners keep on coming from our Biggest Loser: Energy competition for Spring 2012.

Today it’s the winners of the New York Region.

With 4,009 pounds of CO2 reduced and $297 saved in just 15 days, we’re happy to congratulate

Leon M. Goldstein High School for the Sciences

in Brooklyn, New York

How did they do it? Their amazing faculty sponsor, Susan Katzoff, lets us know that it’s drive and leadership:

“As Kenneth Blanchard once said, the key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority. Azemina Lucevic, one of my environmental science students, truly had the qualities to not only lead but motivate most of the students in the class through her inspirational and always flawless work, as she considers herself to be a perfectionist.

A true leader never thinks of themselves but they think of the team, you would never hear her say “I” when addressing a situation, but she would say “we” and that in itself proves she understands how to be a great leader, because without a functioning team what is there to work with? Azemina took on a major task, which not only required a great deal of responsibility, but hard work and dedication. She accepted responsibility for any mishaps that occurred along the way, creating a trusting environment and even though the “we” receives the credit, which is well deserved, without Azemina the task would have never begun.

Our major struggle as a large team was the initial weigh in being that we had an extremely short period of time to complete it. Azemina and Anabel Zaytsev presented this competition to all of the high school staff members at a faculty conference as a way to get teachers and staffers on board. Their presentation impressed much of our staff, and some members were elated to get started on this competition, although you know how that goes some people love it and others not so much. All team leaders and students were extremely stressed with all of the hard work that had to be put in, however, no pain, no glory.

The students were split into a total of twelve teams, and each team had a team leader who had to check in with their assigned rooms and myself at the end of the week to map their progress. Since Leon M. Goldstein High School for the Sciences is big on technology, Azemina came up with a revamped data sheet to record the standby, active, and vampire mode per device, per period in each room. Every team received this sheet, and supplied this to the classroom teacher with an attached instruction sheet. The students were extremely active and on task to make sure everything was going as planned during the hit the gym week.

It has certainly paid off, and I could not be more proud of my students for their hard work and commitment in this going green project. I would not only like to thank my students for a job well done but I would also like to thank ACE for all of the help and support, especially [New York ACE Educator] Maayan Cohen who was not only very sweet but extremely easy to communicate with as well.”

Thank you and congratulations to Ms. Katzoff, Azemina, the Leon M. Goldstein High School Action Team, all of Leon M. Goldstein High School for the Sciences. The hard work, and amazing results, prove it was a well-earned win.

And we eagerly look forward to seeing what you’ll do in the fall waste reduction competition.