CITY SCHOOLS FACE AIRY CHALLENGE FROM VIRUS
Big job in updating school ventilation as reopening looms
City schools will need more than remote learning and social distancing to keep students safe, as they’ll have to make sure mask-wearing students and teachers have clean air to breathe.
But upgrading faulty ventilation systems in time for the return to classes next month will be a massive undertaking, a first-of-its-kind Daily News analysis of more than 1,500 school building inspections shows.
Roughly 650 of the 1,500 buildings surveyed in 2019 by city inspectors had at least one deficiency in their exhaust fans — a critical component of any ventilation system that pushes stale air out to make room for fresh air — according to The News’ analysis. The defects ranged from minor snags to more serious conditions like deteriorated metal and dead motors.
“There’s no ventilation or ... air supply,” said Shawn Hindes, a teacher at Middle School 324 in Washington Heights, where 12 exhaust fans were deemed inoperable and the exhaust system received a “fair to poor” rating overall. The building was one of 63 across the city whose exhaust fans earned an overall rating of “from fair to poor” or “poor.”
Ventilation has suddenly become an urgent concern for scores of city educators and families because of its ability to help — or hinder — the airborne transmission of coronavirus in school buildings set to reopen Sept. 10 if current plans hold.
“Bringing fresh outdoor air into a room can dilute and/or displace any present airborne virus,” wrote the authors of a widely-cited Harvard report on reopening schools. That, in turn, “reduces the probability that someone breathes enough infectious aerosol to become infected,” they added.
For teachers like Hindes, the stakes are clear: “People are going to get sick if there’s no ventilation or air movement.”
City officials have promised every building’s ventilation system will be in working order by next month.
“Rooms will have proper ventilation this fall or they won’t be used. Period,” said Education Department spokesman Nathaniel Styer. “To ensure the total safety of our staff and children, we are making all the necessary repairs on buildings to guarantee proper ventilation and airflow.”
But officials have provided little public information on how many building are undergoing repairs, what those repairs are, and how they’re defining effective ventilation.
The News analysis helps illustrate the scale of the city’s challenge.
At Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, 25 exhaust fans were labeled defective in the city’s 2019 inspection. Public School 84 in Williamsburg had 20 roof fans on the fritz.
Education Department officials note the reports are more than a year old and that custodian engineers at each city buildings surveyed their facilities again this summer to report any ventilation issues. The DOE didn’t provide more detail on how many buildings are getting upgrades, or what those repairs will look like, but a spokesman said the agency “will communicate publicly to families and staff on the repairs being made to schools to ensure proper ventilation” before reopening.
The fans at Middle School 324 in Washington Heights are set to be fixed Monday, officials said.
Even when all the equipment is working properly, though, some city school buildings may have a harder time properly ventilating than others.
Ventilation in city schools happens either “naturally,” by letting fresh air flow in through open windows and out through exhaust fans on the roof, or “mechanically,” by using machines to draw in outside air.
Experts say both methods can work, but warn natural ventilation is more unpredictable, because the level of outdoor air flowing in fluctuates as the air pressure changes.
“Typically it’s not going to be enough having outdoor ventilation,” said Jorge Gonzalez Cruz, a professor of mechanical engineering at the City College of New York. “We need to have some kind of mechanical ventilation.”
In many schools, classroom windows open just several inches as a safety precaution, limiting the amount of air that can come in from outside. Officials say custodial staff in those buildings are working to adjust windows.
Ventilation experts say installing additional portable fans in poorly ventilated rooms could help. In the colder months, schools relying on open windows will have to crank their radiators to the highest settings to keep rooms at a comfortable temperature as the winter air rushes in.
“It’s an expensive solution, but it’s a practical solution,” said Gonzalez Cruz.
Those budgetary concerns could prove costly for a school system already nursing a more than billion-dollar fiscal cut.
When parents from the Brooklyn New School and Brooklyn Collaborative, which share a nearly century-old building in Red Hook, asked about installing additional classroom fans, Education Department officials told them the school would need to buy them with its own, already-diminished budget, according to a letter the parents sent to City Council Member Brad Lander (D-Brooklyn).
The News analysis couldn’t definitively conclude how many schools lack any form of mechanical ventilation, and Education Department officials didn’t give a number. But the data offers some clues.
More than 700 have no “supply fans” — fans that draw in outside air, usually to ventilate large spaces like gyms and auditoriums, that are often an important feature of mechanical ventilation systems.
More than 900 didn’t have a “heating and ventilating unit” meant to pull in outside air, heat it, and distribute it through vents to the building.
Central air conditioning, another feature that can help pull in fresh air and filter air already inside, is entirely absent in 442 school buildings, according to The News analysis.
Gonzalez Cruz said buildings without mechanical ventilation will need additional care and planning to reopen safely this fall.
“This open call for everyone to go back still needs to be thought out on a building by building basis,” he explained.
Meanwhile, Hindes, the Washington Heights teacher, wonders if the city will have enough time to enact its ambitious ventilation upgrade plan.
“It feels horrific,” he said. “This is a bureaucratic nightmare.”