As funding and concern about COVID-19 fades, school plans to fix indoor air quality problems are starting to fall by the wayside.
Tina Andres hates the red light. And this time, it’s not even blinking. It’s just solid red, as in,The air purifier in teacher Andres’ classroom at MacArthur Fundamental Intermediate School in Santa Ana was installed in 2021. But the first time the light went red no new filters could be found, a result of supply chain woes. Now, about two months after installing a replacement, the warning signal is back.
California has been a leader in recognizing this. Even before COVID-19 prompted everybody to think about ventilation, California imposed rules aimed at making sure new school buildings offered clean air. And on Jan. 1, California became the first state to require every school, regardless of age, to assess and, if feasible, to upgrade their ventilation systems.
For starters, there’s no centralized agency to oversee school indoor air quality. State and local air quality districts focus on outdoor air, so questions about indoor air often bounce between various state departments and local agencies. School districts are left to inspect and police themselves. Her fear is that, as the COVID-19 emergency declaration ends and people move on, the funding, equipment and knowledge gained over the past three years won’t translate into long-term efforts to clean up school air — despite ongoing problems with absenteeism and air pollution.
When Southern California Gas distributed portable air purifiers to all classrooms within five miles of a massive leak at the company’s Aliso Canyon storage in 2015, Michael Gilraine, an economics professor at New York University, saw an opportunity. He launched a study comparing student achievement in schools that didn’t get air filters and those that did, and he found substantial improvements in math and English scores for students breathing cleaner air.
Lower income school districts are most likely to have faulty, failing or nonexistent ventilation systems. At the same time, people of color are more likely to suffer from underlying health conditions, such as asthma, that make them more vulnerable to pollutants in their classrooms, turning ventilation into a social justice issue.
Seventh-grade students at Pacific Pathways Prep Middle School in Sacramento, Calif. work on CR-Box filters that will go to low-income patients at the COPD clinic at UC Davis in collaboration with Dr. Brooks Kuhn. The outreach on Friday, March 3, 2023 was part of an ongoing effort to teach air quality principles and build awareness about ventilation.
That’s why the third fix is the one Pistochini focuses on — installing solid HVAC systems that bring in outdoor air, condition and filter it, and expel poor air out of the classroom.Westminstera $76 million bond measure to start to tackle that issue. Manuel Cardoso, assistant superintendent for business services, said five of the district’s 16 schools now have new air HVAC systems, while nine others are nearly done or scheduled for similar upgrades in the summer.
“In those situations, the law says we have to find ways to find the same air quality,” Chavarria said. “So we used three-ply filters and sprayed them with an antimicrobial agent used by hospitals.” That’s on top of $190.5 billion in federal funds approved by Congress to help schools cope with the pandemic. The California Department of Education said that as of Feb. 15, school districts in the state were planning to use $1.6 billion of that money for 951 approved HVAC projects.
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
High school basketball: Southern California and Northern California Regional results and updated pairingsHigh school basketball: Southern California and Northern California Regional results and updated pairings.
Read more »
NASA Images Show Southern California Mountains Before and After Winter StormNASA satellite images illustrate the dramatic difference before and after February’s storms in Southern California’s mountains.
Read more »
Everything you need to know about Saturday's CIF Southern California soccer championshipsSan Pasqual, Point Loma boys, San Marcos girls to play Saturday for CIF Southern California regional championships
Read more »
Construction of $10B high-speed train connecting Southern California, Las Vegas beginsBrightline, the company behind the planned bullet train from Southern California to Las Vegas, has reached a labor agreement with the High-Speed Rail Labor Coalition.
Read more »
Ron DeSantis, Gavin Newsom’s political foe, set to visit Southern CaliforniaThe Florida governor and likely presidential candidate will make two local appearances. Raising money is just part of the reason.
Read more »
Some Southern California mountain residents could be snowed in another week, sheriff saysSome residents stranded in San Bernardino County's mountain communities by a huge snowfall could be stuck for another week, an official said Friday.
Read more »