Even though the weather is cooling down, school districts in the high country are continuing to put in new air conditioning units. This is costing tens of millions of dollars and for some districts, they need the state to help fund those projects.
In order for students to learn in class, they have to feel comfortable. Chino Valley Unified School District Superintendent Cindy Daniels said they’ve noticed classrooms getting warmer as they’ve been operating with swamp coolers in the district which is common for districts up north in Arizona
“There were classrooms that were routinely running between 84 and 86 degrees in the afternoon,” Daniels said of classrooms in Chino Valley High School after doing temperature studies in the district located just north of Prescott.
According to rules and policies from the state, school facilities are required to have systems capable of maintaining temperatures between 68 and 82 degrees under normal conditions with students and staff inside classrooms.
“Our average classroom size, it’s 900 square feet. Put 30 bodies in there and try to cool a room, and it just doesn't work,” Daniels said of the swamp coolers.
This summer was the hottest in the last five years in the Flagstaff and Prescott area, according to the National Weather Service. The district is about halfway through switching out its swamp coolers for HVAC systems, but it comes at a huge expense.
ABC15 received a list of all districts that received the grants over the last few years. Chino Valley topped the list for the most amount of money compared to any other district across the state.
According to the list, the district is getting more than $20 million dollars coming from the Arizona Department of Administration’s Schools Facilities Division. The division has what’s called Building Renewal Grants that allow districts to apply for money to help with facility improvements from HVAC systems to weatherization projects.
“This project will probably end up costing somewhere over $40 million and our annual budget in this district is $20 million. We would never ever have the kind of money that it would take to undertake this project,” Daniels said.
“We looked back at data since Fiscal Year ‘22 and the state has spent roughly $144,000,000 to cover about 1,300 HVAC projects,” said Callie Tyler, the assistant director for the Schools Facilities Division. “Currently, we have more demand on the program than funds available.”
Without this grant, Daniels said the district would not be able to change out all of its swamp coolers for new HVAC systems.
Improvements to school buildings such as AC can be done through bonds approved by voters, but the district said it has not had much success in passing those in more than a decade or so as they haven’t asked since then.
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“No point,” Daniels said of going out for bonds. “It's a lot of money to spend. Our community tells us they've spoken loud and clear that they have no intention to pay additional taxes to support improvements in our facilities.”
The Humboldt Unified School District, located in Prescott Valley, said they’ve also had little luck with getting bonds passed. Those who live in the Chino Valley, Prescott and Prescott Valley areas are those who are in retirement age.
“We didn't make a decision to go this route in place of a bond. When those bonds didn't pass, it was an avenue we were made aware of,” said Brett Dahl, the executive director of human resources and operations with Humboldt Unified.
School buildings and their AC units across the state are aging, and districts are trying to hold on to their HVAC systems for as long as they can.
“The newer units you can get anywhere from 12 to 16 years. The older ones, when you look at the manufacturer’s literature, it should be 10 to 12 years. I believe our youngest one is 22 years old,” said Eric Hall, the director of maintenance at Humboldt Unified.
When the school year started a few months ago, Hall said one of their AC units at a school had a “catastrophic failure,” so students had to be moved out into the hallway before getting portable units to help cool down classrooms.
The compounding factors of climate change, aging buildings and units as well as cost for schools are a concern for climate researchers.
According to a study done by the Center for Climate Integrity, Arizona’s annual operations and maintenance cost for air conditioning is more than $30 million.
Paul Chinowsky, a professor emeritus with University of Colorado Boulder, helped with the study. He said schools across the country need to use more air conditioning than before as the heat sticks around longer.
He said solutions are difficult but there are some realistic ideas schools can do including trying to reduce the heat from coming into classrooms. He said that includes looking at shading structures and putting blinds on windows and looking at natural materials to use.
“The northern part of the state [of Arizona], areas like Flagstaff that never needed air conditioning in the first place, but now all of a sudden find themselves in a situation that they have to come up with tens of millions of dollars to install it,” he said.
Chinowsky added that districts that don’t have as much funding as others will fall behind with climate change.
“This is an equity issue. We can't forget. We can't let high-income schools solve the problem and low-income schools fall further behind. We need to make sure that we solve this for everyone,” he said.
With Chino Valley Unified’s HVAC overhaul, Daniels said the district will have to cut some costs elsewhere to make room to pay for the anticipated increase in electric costs with AC.
“We've asked every department and every school to cut their maintenance and operations budget by a minimum of 10% in order to help save money,” Daniels said.
It’s a big cost to the district that’s trying to have an environment conducive to learning.
“We need to do everything we can to make that happen for kids,” she said.
