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With a few LBUSD campuses lacking AC, recent heatwave had some parents concerned

Grunion Gazette - 9/15/2022

Sep. 15—The heat wave that finally broke in recent days, but seared Southern California for more than a week, caused concern across the region, from power grid operators to health officials.

And even among a smattering of Long Beach parents.

Two dozen students at Carver Elementary School were taken out of school early one day late last week, according to a Long Beach Unified School District official, with some parents expressing concern about the record-breaking heat and a lack of air conditioning at about one-fifth of campuses.

About 80% of LBUSD schools have air conditioning, district spokesman Chris Eftychiou said in an email.

But with climate change causing longer and hotter summers, even along the more temperate coast, and with the average operational school building about 67 years old, according to the LBUSD 2022 Facility Master Plan, multiple other campuses need to update their air conditioning capacities.

The district, for its part, has spent years working to upgrade its 85 campuses, having received voter approval for three bonds worth billions of dollars since 1999 to modernize facilities. And in November, LBUSD will ask voters to OK a fourth modernization bond measure, this time worth $1.7 billion.

The number of children who left Carver early on Friday, Sept. 9, meanwhile, was relatively few, with 24 of 503 students, or less than 5%, heading out before the end of the day, Eftychiou said. It also wasn't clear how many students across LBUSD left early Friday, with Eftychiou saying the district doesn't track attendance that way.

But multiple parents who did take their children out of Carver said they were concerned about the health of their children because of the heat, which surpassed 90 degrees multiple times last week.

Tiffany Seibert, for example, is a mother of two students in LBUSD. Her youngest son, Blake, is a first-grade student at Carver Elementary.

"He's coming out of class and his face is bright red, his hair is soaking wet with sweat, and the first thing he says is 'It's so hot, it's so hot,'" Seibert said. "It's just not a healthy environment for learning."

Her eldest son, Zach, is a seventh-grader at Marshall Academy of the Arts, which has similar issues concerning the heat in his classrooms, Seibert said.

"A couple of his classes are in the portable classrooms, so he said he has AC in two of his classes but in four or five of them he doesn't," Seibert said. "I don't think they are able to focus and pay attention to what they're being taught with the heat."

Seibert was among the parents who also pushed for the district to implement a temporary and faster solution — or perhaps bring back minimum days — while the multiyear modernization projects continue.

But that's easier said than done.

"The installation of air conditioning districtwide is, by necessity, a multi-year project," Eftychiou said, "due to various factors including available labor, materials and the fact that school bond funds are issued in increments (we wouldn't have the funds or capacity to complete all projects at once)."

To combat the heat, Eftychiou said, staff last week took mitigation measures — and will continue to do so when necessary — such as planning strenuous activities for cooler parts of the day, limiting students' outside time during peak heat and encouraging them to stay hydrated.

And for schools that are not completely air conditioned, spaces that do have AC, such as auditoriums or libraries, were used for recess, Eftychiou said. Those schools, including Carver, incorporated rotating class schedules where teachers and staff shuffled students through cooler spaces for 30 minutes at a time.

But, Seibert said, that impacts the time students spend learning.

"By shuffling kids around campus in an effort to keep them cool for a short amount of time," she said, "they're losing class time with that."

Katrina Realda said her son, Sunny, who is also a first-grade student at Carver Elementary, has been telling her how distracting the heat is in his classroom.

"That to me is a big concern," Realda said.

Realda also took Sunny out of class early.

"I don't like taking my son out of school, but I also feel that if he's not concentrating because of the heat, that's not helpful," she said, "I'd rather bring him home, cool him down and hopefully he got as much as he could for the day."

Realda said she has tried to keep up-to-date with the air conditioning renovations at her son's school but the district has not communicated well to parents about what can be done at the moment.

Realda, who is part of the Carver PTA, said she has tried to offer solutions but none seems to be accepted because the school is too old to handle any additional electrical AC units.

"I understand that putting in a whole AC system is something that can't be done overnight," she said, "but I think with cooperation there has to be a better solution."

Parents and anyone else who is interested, though, can see the modernization timeline on the LBUSD website. All of the schools will have air conditioning within the next eight years.

Carver Elementary and Marshall Middle School, among others, are set to have their heat, ventilation and air conditioning renovations finished by the 2026-27 school year.

But, as Realda said, installing new HVAC systems can often be a major undertaking.

"We sometimes must relocate hundreds of students to another campus while air conditioning is installed," Eftychiou said. "The installation of air conditioning usually requires significant upgrades to building infrastructure first, including the electrical systems.

"Unfortunately," he added, "older schools typically do not have the electrical capacity to simply plug in air conditioning."

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