This article has as its object the insertion of environmental education (EE) in public schools, using as a case study the municipal school system of Teresópolis (RJ). Critical EE is the theoretical framework adopted, allowing the understanding of this process in formal education in its relations with federal and municipal public education policies. In methodological terms, the research was developed initially through the analysis of the National Policy for Environmental Education (PNEA) and of official EE documents for that town. At a second moment, the focus rested on the study of official EE projects of the Municipal Secretariat for Education, and on a research conducted directly at schools through the application of a questionnaire built on the basis of a model employed by the Ministry for Education (MEC) in its 2006 study entitled "What do schools that say they are doing Environmental Education do?". By the end of the study, even considering the pertinence of the initiatives by teachers and students in their school daily life, which materialized relevant practices, it was possible to conclude that fundamental questions - curriculum (guidelines, design, and content), reorganization of teaching workload (school management) and teacher initial and continued formation - still need to be addressed by public policies in order to process the effective rooting of EE within the school context.
Critical environmental education; Public policy; School