Coming off one of the most intense heat waves of the year, area schools are considering installing air conditioning in its classrooms.
Goleta Union and Santa Barbara Unified board meetings are grappling with the issue amid the sweltering heat.
While teachers complained about how hot their classrooms got, district administrators were left wondering how to prepare for the potential of hotter school days, especially at the beginning of the school year.
At the Goleta Union School District’s board of trustees meeting on Sept. 9, Victoria Aguirre, a first-grade teacher at Hollister Elementary School, said her classrooms reached up to 87 degrees Fahrenheit last week. It was a new high for Aguirre, who’s taught at the district for 10 years.
“Heat waves are more frequent and lasting longer than ever before,” Aguirre said during public comment.
She added that while teaching 20-plus children is hard, “teaching 20-plus children in that heat is even harder.”
Even before the heat wave last week, when regions of Santa Barbara County reached up to 108 degrees, some classrooms in Goleta Union schools were already feeling the heat.
85-degree classrooms in Goleta
Classrooms at Ellwood Elementary School reached up to 80 degrees during the school day. Some temperatures at Mountain View Elementary School classrooms were as high as 85 degrees, according to a presentation on Goleta Union’s heat mitigation plans by Assistant Superintendent of Fiscal Services Jordan Goines.
A parent from Mountain View Elementary wondered what the district was going to do about the heat long-term.
“I think we all know cooling in classrooms isn’t just a comfort issue, it affects how kids learn,” said Grant Aaron, who is part of the Mountain View Parent Teachers Association.
Aaron said the communication around Measure M, an $80 million bond Goleta voters passed in 2020 to modernize classrooms in the Goleta Union School District, was “worth fixing.”
Projects funded by Measure M include installing solar panels, new classroom furniture, and — perhaps the most notable promise of the bond — re-roofing schools and installing HVAC systems.
Aaron said he believed installing HVAC, an acronym standing for ‘heating, ventilation, air conditioning,” implied schools were getting AC, but he was wrong.
Some board members, such as long-time member Richard Mayer, remember passing up AC as a Measure M project because it would eat up a hefty portion of Measure M funds.
Now, Mayer said, maybe the district should reconsider.
Board member Emily Zacarias suggested conducting a feasibility study to determine whether the district’s electrical grids can support air conditioning in every classroom, before putting another bond in front of voters. She said that project could cost around $60 million and suggested looking at state and federal grants.
The problem with installing AC district-wide is not just contingent on getting the funding, but also whether schools have the proper energy infrastructure in place. Even portable AC units, Assistant Superintendent of Pupil Services John Schettler said, could “trip breakers in the classroom and make electricity turn off.”
Ethan Bertrand, the board president, said he supports a “phased-in approach,” where all school sites, at minimum, have a communal space that has air conditioning.
“How do we make sure we’re being intentional and have a lot of lead time for next year,” Bertrand said. He added that the district should go to voters for larger investments in AC but should get started with smaller investments in the meantime.
Outside of AC, board members Sholeh Jahangir and Vicki Ben-Yaacov said the district should immediately provide more fans to teachers and more shade at school sites, whether through green spaces or solar structures.
Goines said next steps include giving fans to all classrooms in need, providing “pop-ups” or temporary shade structures on the blacktops and grass at schools and potentially installing portable AC units.
Some schools have already taken matters into their own hands.
The PTA of Brandon Elementary School on Sept. 10 launched a fundraiser of $65,000 for a shade structure. $2,755 has been raised as of Sept. 16. Eric Bowers, who is running for the Goleta Union School Board, donated $100.
“With heat wave after heat wave, no air conditioning, and sparse tree coverage, the Brandon PTA is looking to raise $65,000 for the construction of a permanent shade structure over the lunch tables,” the fundraiser reads.
100-degree classrooms in Santa Barbara
Over in the Santa Barbara Unified School District, ambitions of AC installed in every classroom are still far-fetched.
The district’s assistant superintendent of business services, Conrad Tedeschi, said costs can amount to $80 to $90 million.
At the district’s Sept. 15 board meeting, one La Colina Junior High School teacher said her classroom went up to 90.9 degrees Fahrenheit during last Wednesday’s heat wave.
“It is not new information that temperatures continue to rise globally,” said Lisa Sueyres, who teaches performing arts. “The district needs a concrete, equitable plan with what we have now that ensures the health and safety of all of our students and our teachers.”
Additionally, she said she wondered why certain schools were released early due to the heat, but other schools, just minutes away, were not. She compared Harding University Partnership School getting a half-day in August, while La Cumbre Junior High School, a four-minute drive away, did not.
York Shingle and Kat Ross, who teach at McKinley Elementary School and Santa Barbara High School, respectively, said one classroom reached up to 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
“Some schools have rooms with AC where they can try to rotate classes into for a bit to cool down, but most folks just had to deal with the heat,” said Shingle, who is also the president of the Santa Barbara Teachers Association.
Ross said students showed signs of heat stress, sweating, lethargy and difficulty concentrating during the heat wave, and added that the district should have a concrete timeline for implementing AC at each school site.
“Our city is projected to experience more frequent and longer heat waves as climate change progresses,” Ross said. “To protect students’ health, we must be prepared. This means having a heat response plan based on the temperature inside classrooms, not just outside temperatures.”
AC installation on hold in until state gives confirmation
Santa Barbara Unified’s Chief Operating Officer Steve Venz said projects to install AC at five of its schools are currently on hold.
The CalSHAPE program, administered by the California Energy Commission, abruptly paused applications in 2024.
The program gave Santa Barbara Unified a grant of $6 million to assess its HVAC systems at Cleveland Elementary School, Franklin Elementary School, Harding University Partnership, Santa Barbara Community Academy and Santa Barbara Junior High School. The grant covers half of the AC installation costs while the rest comes from the district’s capital funds.
But the program’s sudden pause also brought the district’s AC efforts to a halt.
On Aug. 31, though, the state passed a last-minute budget trailer bill giving schools who’ve already received the grant three years to complete the projects before the state takes back the money.
Now, the district is waiting on confirmation from the California Energy Commission before its AC projects can resume.
