Because they do not have much or any air conditioning, some schools in the Bay Area are having a hard time with the heat wave.
Without a doubt. The Bay Area is very hot.
“It is very hot. “It was between 100 and 106 degrees here in San Rafael yesterday,” said parent Lori Butler.
Some classrooms in San Rafael city schools do not have air conditioning while others do.
The son of Marcella De Santis, who is 5, goes to Sun Valley Elementary.She said, “He is hot and sweaty when I pick him up.”
The air conditioning in his kindergarten classroom keeps it cool in spite of that.
“It is not the coolest.” “But it is not really hot,” De Santis said.
Some classes are even warmer, though.
The head of the school district in San Rafael says that only 9 of the 12 elementary schools in the district have full air conditioning.
A/C is only partly in Sun Valley Elementary and San Pedro Elementary.
One of the older schools, Glenwood Elementary, does not have any air conditioning at all.
“Granwood is one of our older buildings that did not have air conditioning when it was first built.”
Our bond programme is being phased out over several years, and getting it fully air-conditioned is part of that plan,” revealed Superintendent Carmen Ghysels.
Superintendent Ghysels said in a written statement:
“The HVAC projects for the three schools will begin when the summer school year ends in 2025. Sun Valley and San Pedro should be finished by the end of that summer.” We think Glenwood will be finished by the end of the summer of 2026.
The director says that fans are being brought in and that everyone should drink a lot of water. For classes that do not have air conditioning, the gym or multipurpose room is being used for classes or recess.
In California, it is a big problem that some schools do not have air conditioning at all. In a study from last year, researchers from UC Berkeley and Stanford University said:
“Between 15 and 20% of California’s TK-12 public schools… have no functioning mechanical HVAC systems at all…”
Up to an extra 10% of schools need major repairs or system replacements in order to work correct.
Thursday at 3 p.m. on ABC7 News, Dr. Sara Hinkley of UC Berkeley’s Centre for Cities and Schools told us that students have more trouble in schools that do not have air conditioning because “as temperatures rise, students are less likely to pay attention.”
They have a harder time remembering things. We know that in some parts of California, kids have to be sent home early from school because it is so hot.
That clearly makes it harder for students to learn, and more and more studies show that students do not get as much out of the school day when the classroom is hot.
Staff at San Pedro Elementary and other schools say they keep a close eye on the kids, make sure they do not do too much outside in the heat, and make sure everyone drinks enough water.
Cal Matters says that in the Oakland Unified School District, there are about 2,000 classrooms in 77 schools that do not have air fans.
Oakland Unified School District’s Chief Systems and Services Officer, Preston Thomas, said that putting air conditioning in those schools would be a hard and expensive job that would cost at least $400 million.
