A group of parents has taken on Oakland’s sweltering classrooms, launching an ambitious effort to buy and install hundreds of portable air conditioning units. 

Partnering with the Oakland Public Education Fund, Cool the Schools launched a fundraiser last week with the goal of raising $100,000, which would cover the costs of a portable window unit for 200 classrooms. That’s about 10% of the 2,100 classrooms that lack cooling systems across Oakland Unified School District. A volunteer from the group would also install the unit and train the classroom teacher how to use and maintain it. 

As OUSD outfits classrooms with less expensive heat mitigation measures, such as new window blinds, the Cool the Schools coalition of parents are looking for ways to provide immediate relief. Over the summer, they installed dozens of air conditioning units in classrooms across the district. 

The first $5,000 in donations will be matched by an anonymous donor, and the group hopes to meet that preliminary goal by the end of the month. Teachers can apply for a unit on the CoolTheSchools.org website. The funds will be distributed to Title I schools based on how hot they are — first prioritizing classrooms that reach temperatures above 85 degrees, then those that reach temperatures above 80 degrees — and schools where more than 60% of students come from low-income families, are English learners or are foster youth.

“We want to get students safer today while the district is doing what it’s doing with the heat mitigation plan,” said Rachael Kirk-Cortez, a parent at Sequoia Elementary School. 

Last spring, Kirk-Cortez and other parents at Sequoia Elementary called on the district to take action after a March heat wave saw classroom temperatures there rise to more than 82 degrees. After parents installed thermometers and then DIY solutions of window films and air conditioning units, they saw temperatures drop by more than five degrees. 

Research has shown that hotter temperatures can make it harder for students to focus and learn, and that the ideal temperature for concentration is 72 degrees.

In April, the district presented a plan to address the issue, which includes temperature sensors in every classroom, along with select schools receiving UV window films and portable air conditioning units. It also includes infrastructure improvements such as reflective roof coating that can lower surface temperatures and additional shade structures. District staff and contractors worked over the summer to start that work, which will continue throughout the fall and spring, facilities staff said at a Thursday meeting of the school board’s facilities committee.

“We compared a south-facing classroom at East Oakland Pride to an adjacent teachers’ lounge, and we’ve been able to see an average temperature reduction of about three to four degrees,” Olivia Boitano, an employee with the firm Brailsford and Dunlavey working with the district’s facilities team, said of the window films’ effectiveness. 

At the root of the issue is the district’s aging infrastructure, which largely lacks central cooling systems. While cooling rooftops and window films can help now, renovating the district’s buildings, many of which are more than 50 years old, will take years and many millions of dollars, said Preston Thomas, OUSD’s director of systems and services. 

“When it’s 97 degrees out, like it was last Wednesday, passive measures are going to be impossible to address that level of heat,” Thomas said during Thursday’s meeting. “That is going to take at least a decade for us to address that issue, because if you’re thinking $6 million to $10 million per site to get active cooling in each of those sites, it is going to require funding from the next bond.”

‘Tripping circuit breakers across the district’

OUSD parent Matthew Kirk-Cortez, left, shows Manzanita Community School teacher Maria Flores how to remove and clean the filter in her donated window unit. Credit: Ashley McBride/The Oaklandside

As another heat wave brought stifling temperatures to classrooms across OUSD this month, parent volunteers installed a window air conditioning unit in Maria Flores’ transitional kindergarten classroom at Manzanita Community School. Flores, who grew up in Fremont, said she remembered classrooms having air conditioning when she was a child, and she was shocked that most OUSD classrooms didn’t. 

Some of the 4-year-olds in her class may not be able to say it, but they notice something’s off when it’s hot inside. 

“Some of them are like, ‘It’s too cold,’ and I tell them, ‘It’s too hot,” Flores told The Oaklandside. “They know something’s off with the temperatures in here, but they still don’t know how to explain it. A lot of them are extra tired and are falling asleep during rest time.”

Additional pressure on schools’ electrical systems, whether because of fans or window units, could also trigger new problems. 

“During the hottest day [of the heat wave], people were tripping circuit breakers across the district, so our electricians were actually having to go out to just turn the power back on at schools, rather than being able to address some of the work that we’re talking about that’s moving forward,” Thomas said. “And that maintenance can take a while. So there is a capacity challenge that we have in terms of who can go out and do that work.”

OUSD has committed about $4.5 million so far from its Measure Y facilities bond to heat mitigation, and district officials plan to bring forward a long-term heat mitigation plan next year, which could rely on future bond funding.

Kirk-Cortez, the Sequoia parent, acknowledges that compared with a functioning HVAC system, the window units are a temporary solution. 

“The goal shouldn’t be to maintain these for a decade,” she said. “This is an emergency method to keep kids safe while we continue to work with bond funding and future bonds to create a real maintainable system.”

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