APS hopes summer strategy keeps classrooms cool with start of school year approaching

Dealing with warming temperatures and outdated, or ineffective, cooling systems, Albuquerque Public Schools is banking on a strategy it tried this summer to keep classroom temperatures down in the short term, while also seeking long-term solutions from voters.

School starts for all students in the district — except kindergarteners — in roughly two weeks on Aug. 7.

To avoid cooling systems failing as they have in years past, the district has kept all of them on through the summer to monitor their performance and also to avoid situations where a system is booted on and doesn’t work correctly at the beginning of the school year.

“The idea, too, is we don’t shut the units down to where we got to do a full startup again,” John Dufay, APS assistant deputy for operations, said Friday. “If it fails on us, it fails when we know about it today, not when we turn everything on Aug. 1 or something like that.”

Additionally, maintenance has taken place on the cooling systems since May, according to a news release the district sent out, which included “servicing evaporative coolers and replacing cooling pads and servicing and testing HVAC units to pre-empt problems for the new school year.”

However, there are still no guarantees that cooling on some campuses won’t fail or provide adequate cooling, as many systems are older and use evaporative cooling, which is less effective than HVAC systems — especially as temperatures rise. The district has set aside $14 million for contractors to help its staff handle work orders related to cooling issues, according to Dufay.

“If the evaporative cooling is working well, and you have low humidity that you can deal with, the best you can get is about 24 degrees below the outside temperature,” Dufay said.

Only 28% of classrooms have refrigerated air conditioning, and the rest still rely on evaporative coolers, according to the district.

“Once you get really over that, 73, 74, certainly 75 (degree) mark, going into the 80s, you can’t concentrate, you really can’t learn,” incoming Deputy Superintendent for Operations Antonio Gonzales said Friday.

To address some of these issues, the district is asking voters in November to approve a $350 million bond package, with $40 million allocated to installing state-of-the-art HVAC systems at 20 schools deemed the most in need of improvement.

Ellen Bernstein, president of the local teachers union, said she was happy to see the district prioritizing the issue ahead of the new school year, but noted the need for refrigerated air and the importance of the bond to pass because swamp coolers are no longer getting the job done.

Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show that in Albuquerque, there were 17 days in 2023 when the temperature reached 100 degrees or higher — the highest number in 35 years. Last year, there were at least five days when the temperature hit 100 degrees or higher.

“If you look at days in the year 1990 that were over 90 degrees compared to the days this year that are over 90 degrees, we’re dealing with apples and oranges,” Gonzales said. “We have units that were installed at that period of time that we’re still functioning and using to maintain conditions within our classrooms.”