No longer just 'a few hot days': Poudre School District reckons with climbing temperatures

Adrian Flygt has a booming voice. It’s the reason he prefers to sit outside of coffee shops to have a conversation, and why he makes a great announcer for Rocky Mountain High School’s volleyball games. Even with his powerful voice, Flygt has to use a microphone when teaching his physics and engineering students in order to be heard over the sound of six fans working to cool his classroom.

Flygt has weathered a lot of adversity during the 12 years he has taught in the Poudre School District. He worked through a global pandemic and has served as a resource for countless students attempting to navigate adolescence. But one experience he can’t seem to get away from is the sweat dripping down his back while the late August and early September heat turns his classroom into what he said feels like a convection oven.

“Teaching and learning in rooms that are over 85 degrees is not good for anyone,” Flygt said. “It will not bring out the performances and the qualities that make these young people excellent.”

Flygt is one of countless PSD teachers “making compromises” in order to teach in classrooms that lack air conditioning. More than 60% of schools in the district do not have central air conditioning, prompting district leaders to make difficult decisions — like closing school two hours early on the hottest days of this school year — and come to terms with the new reality of navigating hotter days heading into each fall.

PSD is not alone.

School districts across Colorado and the United States are struggling to balance limited budgets and emergent infrastructure needs as global temperatures rise. An estimated 41% of school districts across the U.S. need to replace heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems in at least half of their schools, representing 36,000 schools nationwide, according to a 2020 study from the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

More:Fort Collins community members now have access to 4 PSD all-weather tracks

PSD accounts for a small handful of these schools, but the heat in classrooms has come to represent bigger societal issues, like aging infrastructure, inequitable learning opportunities and the realities of a warming planet.

With calls from teachers, students and parents mounting for PSD to address high classroom temperatures in a more comprehensive fashion, here’s a look at how these factors are playing out within the PSD community.

Aging infrastructure and limited budgets create an uphill battle for PSD

New HVAC systems come with a hefty price tag and a prolonged installation timeline. They often can’t be funded without the help of voters to pass bonds or approve increases in property taxes for what will likely be a multimillion-dollar project, according to PSD officials.

But the need for air conditioning is not a new problem for PSD. Previous reporting from the Coloradoan documents some of the cost estimates and how the heat issue has played out in the community over the last 20 years.

In 2003, the Coloradoan reported PSD had cut air conditioning from several school renovation projects to save the district $3.5 million.

More:Here's what Fort Collins is (and isn't) funding in its $800 million 2023-24 budget

In 2013, PSD considered using money from a 2010 bond package to install air conditioning throughout the district, but the estimated cost — $45-50 million — was deemed too steep. Instead, the district focused on air tempering systems that are designed to cool outside air by about 10 degrees, though teachers in the district said the air tempering doesn’t make much of a difference when it’s 90 degrees outside.

Fort Collins High School had a tempered air system, though it no longer works, according to Rick Blas, an environmental science teacher at the school.

“I’ve been here 21 years and there’s never been good air conditioning,” Blas said.

This year, he purchased fans and a portable air conditioner for his room with his own money, but by the end of the day, the temperature in his south-facing room gets above 80 degrees. He said his room is one of the farthest from the tempered air system, so even when it was working, he didn’t feel much of a benefit.

In 2015 then Superintendent Sandra Smyser presented results from the district’s facility condition assessment, which estimated it would cost around $84 million to add air conditioning units to 40 district buildings and the project would take 10 years. At the time, Smyser noted “air conditioning is typically used for 18 days a year.”

Fast forward to 2022 and not much has changed except for the cost of the project.

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Today's cost to put air conditioning units into the 35 PSD schools that either don’t have central air systems at all or don’t have working units is unknown.

“(It’s) complicated due to building size and specific needs, said Matt Bryant, chief operations officer for the Poudre School District, via email. “We also must consider the volatility in pricing and supply chain issues.”

A 2021 study from the Center for Climate Integrity, which used data from the U.S. Department of Education and the World Climate Research program to determine the cost of retrofitting schools nationwide, estimates it will cost PSD roughly $110 million for initial equipment and construction and another $1.8 million in maintenance costs.

Dave Montoya, PSD's chief financial officer told the Coloradoan the district doesn’t have a timeline for when air conditioning could be implemented or for when voters might be asked to pass a bond or a tax increase because district leaders haven’t completed their full analysis.

“We currently do not have resources that could take on the project of this scope,” said Montoya.

PSD officials did not share any information on what their most recent analysis process looks like or how long it could take. A list of PSD schools that have air conditioning, air tempering or neither appears at the bottom of this article.

Moving PSD's start date will help but doesn't solve the issue

What used to be “just a few hot days” at the beginning of the school year has become a few hot weeks, said Flygt, the Rocky Mountain High teacher.

Since the school year started on Aug. 16, Fort Collins has had 31 days when the daytime high temperature hit at least 80 degrees and 14 days when temperatures climbed into the 90s, according to data from the Colorado Climate Center.

Some teachers in the district, like Doug Julian, who teaches physical education at Werner Elementary, are asking PSD's governing board and superintendent to consider pushing the district's start date later into the year, like after Labor Day.

“This is one of the earliest years that we started back,” Julian said. This is his 24th year working at Werner Elementary.

Julian said he thinks pushing back start dates is the best option the district has at this time.

But as Superintendent Brian Kingsley said in his last update to the board of education, referencing the early releases the district instituted to cope with high temperatures nearing 100 degrees on Sept. 7-8, “I believe last week was after Labor Day.”

More:High temps, hot turf and high school sports have PSD monitoring artificial field safety

Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows temperatures in Colorado have risen 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit since the start of the 20th century and warming has occurred throughout all four seasons. Six of the eight warmest years on record have occurred in the past decade.

“As variable as Colorado weather is, it has been reliably getting warmer over the last 50 years,” said Scott Denning, a climate scientist and professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University. “The average temperature is going up, and it’s going to keep going up.”

Denning said moving the school year’s start date a month forward is a good way to mitigate some of the heat issues, but it’s not a replacement for putting air conditioning in the schools or addressing the broader issue of climate change in general.

"Stop burning coal, oil and gas because that's what's causing this problem," Denning said. "When you talk about spending hundreds of millions of dollars to fix schools, it isn't just schools. It's also homes, apartment buildings, factories, offices, stores. The sooner we stop setting carbon on fire, the less it's going to cost."

Denning predicts long term, PSD will eventually have to put air conditioning in schools. "It’s not OK with me, as a taxpayer, as a parent, to put 6-year-olds in 100-degree classrooms all day,” Denning said.

Teachers and experts agree: Lack of access to air conditioning creates inequitable learning environments

As global temperatures rise, experts have started to examine how hot classrooms impact a student’s ability to learn. A 2018 study from the National Bureau of Economic Research and researchers at Harvard found that students exposed to heat over time saw a decline in cognitive ability. Air conditioning mitigated these impacts.

Both Blas and Flygt have watched the heat impact their students.

Blas said several of his students doze off in his classroom by the end of the day because it’s so hot. Flygt recalls having a pregnant student who had to miss his class because the heat in the classroom was unsafe for her.

“I don’t know how a high-school kid can focus on anything when it's that hot,” Blas said.

Teachers are also having to make changes to their lesson plans to accommodate sweltering rooms.

Flygt said on especially hot days, he’ll try to have a lesson that can be done in a computer lab, which is air conditioned. Or he’ll try to borrow another teacher’s room that is cooler when he has to teach a lab.

“We are being forced to compromise what we’re doing because of limited infrastructure,” Flygt said.

Even schools with air conditioning, like Timnath and Wellington middle-high schools, which both opened for the first time this year, are being impacted. Both schools still had to close early along with the rest of the district so bus routes were not disrupted, according to PSD officials.

Stephanie Malin is an environmental sociologist and professor at Colorado State University specializing in environmental justice. Malin said anytime there's inequitable access to resources because of a failure in the "built environment," which includes infrastructure like school buildings, it presents a "very real environmental justice issue."

“There are safety and health issues that can come with a built environment that doesn't accommodate things like extreme heat and climate crisis,” Malin said.

This is especially the case when talking about vulnerable populations like children, who are more susceptible to issues arising from exposure to extreme heat, she said.

“It’s certainly an issue of environmental injustice because the built environment isn't able to serve folks who are required to be there," Malin said. "And because they’re children, they also don't have a lot of autonomy or power to leave the situation. And the same is true for teachers.”

"Those of us who have been around long enough just kind of realized the first two months are going to be rough," Blas said.

Both Blas and Flygt said they continue coming back each year for their students, despite the challenges.

"The collective wear and tear on teachers is … we are threadbare.” Flygt said. "But the young people in the district, and young people in general, are the future and the changemakers of our community and of the world. I continue to stay in education because I believe in that potential above all else."

What resources PSD schools have as of October 2022:

Air conditioning: Bacon Elementary, Bamford Elementary, Bethke Elementary, Blevins Middle, Lincoln Middle, Rice Elementary, Rocky Mountain High School,* Timnath Middle-High, Wellington Middle, Wellington Middle-High, Zach Elementary

Tempered air: Bauder Elementary, Beattie Elementary, Boltz Middle, Eyestone Elementary, Fort Collins High, Fossil Ridge High, Irish Elementary, Johnson Elementary, Kinard Middle, Kruse Elementary, Laurel Elementary, Linton Elementary, Lopez Elementary, McGraw Elementary, Olander Elementary, Poudre High, Preston Middle, Riffenburgh Elementary, Shepardson Elementary, Tavelli Elementary, Traut Elementary, Werner Elementary

No tempered air or air conditioning: Bennett Elementary, Cache La Poudre Elementary, Cache La Poudre Middle, Centennial High, Dunn Elementary, Harris Elementary, Lesher Middle, Livermore Elementary, O'Dea Elementary, Polaris, Poudre Community Academy, Putnam Elementary, Red Feather Elementary, Stove Prairie Elementary, Timnath Elementary, Webber Middle

*Rocky Mountain High School is listed as having air conditioning, but it doesn't work.

This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: PSD may face more than $100 million bill to cool sweltering classrooms