Last October, the Bay Area experienced a record heat wave, one of a series of unprecedented heat waves over the last several years. As temperatures climbed into the 90s, teaching and learning became uncomfortably challenging in a number of classrooms across the Alameda Unified School District.
According to the state of California’s fourth Climate Change Assessment, published by UC Berkeley in 2018, the Bay Area’s average temperature increased 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit between 1950 and 2005. As climate change pushes temperatures higher in the coming years (scientists currently project a 3.3- to 4.4-degree increase by midcentury), classroom conditions will likely worsen.
The AUSD is not the only school district challenged by rising temperatures. More than two-thirds of schools in this state are at least 25 years old — with many much older — and most were not built with rising temperatures in mind. Across the state, 15 to 20% of all K-12 public schools have no functioning classroom heating, ventilation and air conditioning, and another 10% need major HVAC repairs or replacement.
Given that the state government does not provide money to maintain or modernize schools, this work can be dauntingly expensive for school districts. In response to these challenges, the AUSD launched a Classroom Heat Mitigation Project in this past 2024-25 school year.
The project included developing a rubric to determine which classrooms already had either air conditioning or fans and which rooms most needed cooling help; piloting the use of fans and air conditioners; projecting costs for fans and/or air conditioning in the classrooms that most needed it; and identifying funding for these cooling strategies.
Ultimately, the team decided that overhead fans would be the most cost-effective solution. This summer, AUSD maintenance, operations and facilities staff installed overhead fans in 54 classrooms, and fans will be installed in the remaining 25 next summer (if not before). Staff also installed window tinting to block direct sunlight in 11 classrooms.
The impact of the fans will be measured by classroom thermostats and a teacher survey to be sent out after the first heat wave this fall. That survey will elicit feedback on the comfort level, air circulation and noise experienced during heat waves in classrooms with fans or window tinting and those with neither.
In the meantime, AUSD officials would like to thank Alameda Green Schoolyards, a private-public partnership founded by Meg Amarasiriwardena, an AUSD parent and garden educator at Love Elementary School, for using a grant from California ReLeaf to install seven trees in the transitional kindergarten and kindergarten yards at Ruby Bridges Elementary School.
The group is a subcommittee of the districtwide parent-teacher-association council, and we very much appreciate their commitment to finding “green” cooling strategies for our schools.
Reach Susan Davis, the Alameda Unified School District’s senior manager for community affairs, at 510-337-7175 or SDavis@alamedaunified.org.