Last October, the Bay Area experienced a record heatwave, one of a series of record-breaking heatwaves over the last several years. As temperatures climbed into the 90s, teaching and learning became uncomfortably challenging in a number of classrooms across AUSD.

According to the state’s 4^th Climate Change Assessment, published by UC Berkeley in 2018, the Bay Area’s average temperature increased 1.7 degrees F between 1950 and 2005. As climate change pushes temperatures higher in the coming years (scientists currently project a 3.3 – 4.4 degree F increase by mid-century), classroom conditions will likely worsen.

Yet schools across the state are ill-equipped to handle rising temperatures, in large part due to the fact that most school facilities were built before climate change had been identified. According to a 2024 report by the non-profit Cal Matters, between 15 and 20 percent of California’s K-12 public schools lack functional heating and air conditioning.

In response to these challenges, in 2024-25 AUSD launched a Classroom Heat Mitigation Project. 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, Maintenance, Operations, and Facilities staff installed overhead fans in 54 classrooms; the remaining 25 will be installed next summer (if not before). Staff also installed window tinting to block direct sunlight in eleven classrooms.

The impact of the fans will be measured by both classroom thermostats and a teacher survey to be sent out after the first major heatwave this year. That survey will elicit feedback on the comfort level, air circulation, and noise during heat waves in both classrooms with fans or window tinting and classrooms without either treatment.

In the meantime, we’d 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 applying for and 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 district-wide PTA Council and we very much appreciate their commitment to finding “green” cooling strategies for our schools.