Classroom cooling an issue at Albuquerque Public Schools despite district's summer strategies

On the second day of the new school year, there were nearly 500 work orders to fix cooling systems across Albuquerque Public Schools’ almost 150 campuses as an August heat wave saw temperatures reach 101 degrees on Friday.

Over the summer, the district kept many of its cooling systems running in hopes of avoiding issues with them failing as teachers and students returned to classrooms in August.

As of noon Friday, there were 492 open work orders for HVAC issues across APS campuses, according to district spokesperson Phill Casaus, who said “an open order means it’s in process, but not yet complete.” He was unable to provide a number on how many campuses were affected Friday evening.

He added that since July 1, 2,985 work orders had been completed.

High temperatures and low humidity have been shown to impact students’ ability to learn and the teachers’ ability to instruct.

“For students, hot classrooms can make it difficult to concentrate while low humidity harms airways, making it easier for respiratory viruses to take hold,” said Shao Lin, senior co-author on a 2022 study tracking student and teacher distress in hot environments, and professor of Environmental Health Sciences at the University of Albany’s School of Public Health. “Dry air can also cause eye irritation and disrupt sleep.”

One of the campuses facing cooling issues is La Cueva High School.

“This happens every year at all the schools ... it wouldn’t be a recurring issue at every school in the district if they actually were trying,” English teacher Michael Sanchez said Thursday.

He added that the thermostat in his room only goes up to 90 degrees, and the classroom temperature has surpassed that mark.

“Obviously they (APS) are working on it, I know they’re spending money, I know they’re doing work,” Sanchez said. “But it is enormously frustrating to read the doublespeak coming out from the district saying ‘we have done a great job’ when, I mean, that’s objectively not true.”

Across the hall from him, Doug Mattson had to bring fans from home to try to keep his classroom conditions bearable.

“You have to kind of roll between turning them off so you can communicate and turning them on to keep some air moving,” Mattson said. “It’s not cooling the room, it’s just keeping air moving, and I think that brings a little bit of relief.”

While APS touted its proactive strategy to keep cooling units on, it did acknowledge leading up to the beginning of the school year that there would likely still be some cooling issues, noting that a majority of the cooling mechanisms on campuses are evaporative cooling systems, which usually only lower the temperature inside by some 15 degrees.

“We’ve never said we had ‘done a great job.’ We said we’d done many, many things to prepare before the school year began and would respond as quickly as possible if and when things break down — as would surely happen when you have thousands and thousands of mechanical systems working in nearly 100-degree heat,” Casaus said in response to Sanchez’s claim.

The district — in addition to its technicians — has $14 million allocated to contractors responding to cooling issue work orders.

In November, voters within APS boundaries will have the chance to pass a bond package of $350 million, $40.2 million of which would be used to add refrigerant cooling to 20 campuses — five middle schools, 14 elementary schools and one alternative high school.

On Friday, portions of Eldorado High School’s campus were also experiencing issues with their cooling systems.

“It’s very hot. The AC has not been working this entire week, and since I only have one fan, the kids get really hot, and then I have around 30 kids at least per class period,” English teacher Nohemi Carrillo said. “... So it gets really hot, and the kids obviously complain about it.”

She said she would like to see better maintenance of campus buildings and the district, “not just putting a bunch of students in one hot classroom and expecting them to learn and behave.”

In another portion of campus, her colleague Courtney Lawton’s swamp cooler was working, which Lawton said is a relief for students coming into her classroom.

“They have said when they come into my classroom that it’s cool in my classroom, they say that ‘it’s so fresh in here,’” Lawton said.

She added that she would also like to see more maintenance and said, “Teacher working conditions are student learning conditions. And I don’t think that students learn very well when they’re too hot.”

“Every time school starts back, we fully expect our classrooms to be hot,” Lawton said. “We’re pleasantly surprised when they are not.”