It’s mid-afternoon on a hot August school day when over 35 hyperactive elementary schoolers rush into class from recess clambering to get to their seats.
Their teacher closes and locks the door as heat radiates from each of their little bodies. Soon the temperature inside their classroom begins to rise, reaching close to 90 degrees, one teacher told El Paso Matters.
According to teachers and parents, a similar scene plays out inside some El Paso Independent School District classrooms where, as students returned to school from summer vacation, some have had to endure a sweltering heat inside classrooms.
“Any given day, it’s usually 80 degrees in there,” Guillen Middle School orchestra teacher Yolanda Alaniz told El Paso Matters about her classroom. “In music, we teach kids not to lock their knees, but sometimes they do and because of the heat, they pass out. Especially because they’re coming in from running from outside and, because they’re self conscious about their bodies, they wear their hoodies and are already sweating.”
Alaniz said one of her students, who is disabled, has had epileptic attacks she believes may have been triggered due to the heat.
Parents, employees and local advocates have been calling for the district to upgrade its evaporative air conditioning to refrigerated air, as climate change and school safety regulations have made it harder to keep schools cool.
One El Paso environmental group, Amanecer People’s Project, launched a grassroots campaign in June pushing for EPISD to upgrade the cooling systems in 22 elementary and middle schools that have what organizers say are ineffective evaporative coolers.
“They used to be somewhat adequate, but as we increase temperatures, they get less and less adequate. Especially, if you have 40 kids in the classroom, and you’re trying to cool it with, like, a water hose and a fan,” said Matthew Rodriguez, organizer of the campaign the group is calling Escuelas Frescas, or Cool Schools.
These schools include:
- Canyon Hills Middle
- Guillen Middle
- Wiggs Middle
- Bliss Elementary
- Coldwell Elementary
- Crockett Elementary
- Douglass Elementary
- Green Elementary
- Guerrero Elementary
- Hawkins Elementary
- Hillside Elementary
- Kohlberg Elementary
- Lamar Elementary
- Newman Elementary
- Nixon Elementary
- Park Elementary
- Putnam Elementary
- Rusk Elementary
- Stanton Elementary
- Travis Elementary
- Telles Academy
- Zavala Elementary
EPISD’s Chief Operations Officer Stacy Pierson told El Paso Matters the district has 15 campuses that use evaporative cooled air conditioning and about 10 more that use a combination of evaporative and refrigerated air. He did not identify the schools.
“When these systems were installed, it was the new technology in school operations and humidity levels in the desert were low to non-existent. Nowadays, climate change and aged units are a huge burden on the region and district for comfort cooling desires,” Pierson said in a statement.
Now the district is looking to go to voters to approve a bond to pay for the upgrades as EPISD and schools across Texas deal with budget deficits.
The districtplans to hold a bondelection in 2025 to upgrade air conditioning, improve security and potentially pay for construction of new consolidated school campuses under a plan EPISD has dubbed “Destination District Redesign.”
EPISD still hasn’t revealed which schools might be affected, but is holdingpublic meetingsto share input it gathered from the community.
The Escuelas Frescas campaign organizers initially aimed to have the district apply for funds through the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which provides federal dollars for climate related projects, including improving air quality.
IRA would only give the district a 6% tax credit on a project if it includes some form of carbon neutral element, “which means that refrigerated air would not actually qualify,” EPISD Trustee Leah Hanany said during the campaign meeting.
Now, Escualas Frescas campaign organizers hope to rally the community to ask for greater accountability in the bond process.
“We don’t want to vote for the bond next November and then the air conditioning be installed six, seven years later. That’s what we’re having discussions about, what kind of accountability measures can we build into the bond language so that kids aren’t waiting another half decade to get this done,” Rodriguez told El Paso Matters.
Rodriguez said other schools in El Paso aren’t dealing with the same cooling issues as EPISD.
Staff for the Socorro Independent School District said all its campuses are outfitted with refrigerated air. The Ysleta Independent School District said it has refrigerated air in all but one campus but did not specify which one.
Students at schools with refrigerated air may still have to endure the heat when coolers are down for repairs.
SISD officials said some of its campuses, including Purple Heart Elementary School, Walter Clarke Middle School and John Drugan School, have had issues with their air conditioning units.
“High temperatures put a strain on equipment, which unfortunately at times causes systems to malfunction. With schools, businesses and households facing similar challenges at the same time, it takes longer to receive parts needed for repairs,” SISD Chief Communications Officer Daniel Escobar said in a statement.
How has climate change affected education?
El Paso has been long known for its hot and dry weather, especially in the summer months. Still, temperatures have risen across the region in recent decades due to the effects of climate change.
More than one-third of the 2023-24 school year had daily high temperatures that reached over 90 degrees, according to temperatures recorded by the National Weather Service.
The number of days El Paso schools deal with extreme heat also increased.
During the 1970-71 school year, after many of the schools identified by the Escuelas Frescas Campaign were built, not a single school day reached over 100 degrees, according to the National Weather Service. Six days reached those temperatures during the 2003-04 school year. That number grew to 16 days during the 2023-24 school year.
“Extreme heat affects children’s health, their development and their behavior. It can also impact students’ ability to concentrate and learn,” University of Arizona geosciences professor, Joellen Russell, told El Paso Matters.
Russell, who is a member of a nonpartisan group of climate scientists calledScience Moms, said most people become uncomfortable or slow down their work at 78 to 80 degrees.
She pointed to onestudyof high school students who took the PSAT that found that each one degree increase in school year temperature reduces the amount a student learns by 1%. The study also found that students performed worse on the test when they had hotter school days the year before, with extreme heat being particularly damaging to low-income and minority students.
Russell said air conditioning can offset some of the negative outcomes of scorching summer temperatures, but later noted that evaporative coolers aren’t up to the task of dealing with extreme heat.
EPISD staff said these coolers have become even more ineffective after the Texas Education Agency in 2023 enacted a new policy requiring classroom doors and windows to remain closed and locked during school hours in response to the Robb Elementary School shooting in May 2022 where 21 people were killed.
“I know the AC units worked fine when we were able to keep our doors open and our windows cracked, but because of all the school shootings, we now have the Safe Schools Act, and we have to keep our doors locked and closed at all times,” said an EPISD employee who asked to remain anonymous.
Evaporative coolers require windows to be partially opened to allow warm indoor air to escape as it’s replaced by cool air, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
Beating the heat in school
As school days have gotten hotter, the El Paso school district has made an effort to upgrade its air conditioning systems and keep students cool.
EPISD is at the tail end of completing a series of projects, costing over $39 million, to replace air conditioners in “high occupancy areas” such as cafeterias and gymnasiums using COVID-19 relief funds.
Pierson said he was not there during the planning phase of the project when asked why it didn’t include classrooms.
“The goal was obviously to touch as many common spaces as possible to offer relief to as many staff and students as possible,” Pierson said in a statement.
In early August when students returned to school, EPISD also announced it had set up “cooling stations” outfitted with temporary refrigerated air conditions and fans throughout campuses using evaporative coolers.
Students and staff can go to these cooling stations that are set up in common areas throughout various campuses.
Aside from upgrading AC systems, Russell said schools can keep schools cool and save on energy by planting trees to shade the south side of a building, upgrade to energy efficient windows and shade nearby parking lots.
She said the district can also look into reducing the effects of climate change by taking advantage of the IRA to pay for electric school buses.
“These are sort of step wise projects. You can start small and then get bigger,” Russell said.
