Like school districts in nearby cities such as Redondo Beach and Santa Monica, Manhattan Beach has struggled with the heat lately.
A third of the district has air conditioning, according to Manhattan Beach Unified School District Superintendent Dr. Michael Matthews.
But Manhattan Beach Preschool, all of the elementary schools and some of Mira Costa High School don’t.
The administration has already ordered more fans, although at the Sept. 16 school board meeting when the board discussed the issue Assistant Superintendent Dawnalyn Murakawa-Leopard acknowledged that they only bring minor relief.
“The fan moves hot air from one place to another, but it’s not any cooler,” she said.
The school board contemplated purchasing temporary air conditioning units at the meeting. But even if the plan is approved, the units probably won’t be installed for about a year.
A couple of teachers told the board that the weather was not only uncomfortable, but also hurt learning.
Sondra Abrams, a kindergarten teacher at Pacific Elementary, said she gave her students 10-minute water and bathroom breaks every half an hour, resulting in 40 to 50 minutes less instruction time each day.
“It’s difficult to see their faces red and sweating when they’re sitting on the carpet, exerting no energy,” she said. “The heat in my classroom exceeds 90 degrees with four fans blowing. I don’t know when 90 degrees became an acceptable temperature for teachers to teach and students to learn.”
The fans were a distraction to her class and potentially dangerous as one student tripped on one, she said.
Shawn Chen, an English teacher at Mira Costa and president of the Manhattan Beach Unified Teachers Association, said her tenth graders were equally distracted by the fans. She related how some of her students lifted a heavy cart of bibles when she had to move the class to a cooler classroom.
Installing air conditioning throughout the district is included in the Facilities Master Plan the board commissioned last year, according to Superintendent Dr. Michael Matthews. The board is currently deciding what parts of the plan, which totaled about $320 million, it wants to implement before putting a bond measure before voters.
If the school board put the bond out next fall, it would take at least three to four years before air conditioning could be installed, Matthews said. School Board President Bill Fournell estimated that it would take even longer, based on the eight years it took to complete the upgrades to Mira Costa included in the last bond.
The quickest option would be to install window units, costing between $1,200-1,300 each. Murakawa-Leopard estimated would take a year to install in all of the classrooms without AC if done with the current maintenance staff. The total cost would be about $300,000 she said.
Those units only last about two years, however, so they would probably have to be replaced at least once before the Master Facilities Plan could be implemented.
“It’s a two-year throwaway cost,” said Fournell. “If the bond project hasn’t been funded, in two years, we would throw the money away again.”
Another option would be to install slightly more permanent units costing $13,000 per classroom and last between 10 to 15 years, according to Murakawa-Leopard. The total cost would be $3.2 million. Besides having a more involved installation, the project would have to be approved by the Division of the State Architect, an agency that reviews construction in public schools, which would prolong the process.
On Sept. 18, Matthews told staff in an email that the administration would get an estimate for the cost of installing the window units in all of the classrooms without air conditioning which they would present to the board for approval. In addition to the cost of the units, the district may have to hire more staff to expedite the installation and upgrade the electrical capacity at some schools.
After the discussion among the board members at the Sept. 16 meeting, Chen returned to the podium to say that the cost would be worth it.
“It would not be a waste of money to invest in the safety of students which Dr. Matthews mentioned, but also teachers who are also in classrooms,” she said. “Even though I know you have to replace them, it would be very highly appreciated.” ER
