Think creatively for cooler schools

It’s February. It’s cool, downright chilly, some mornings. Maybe that’s the problem with the perennial legislative debate over the need for air conditioning in Hawaii’s public schools: It always occurs in winter.

But the school year begins in late July or early August, and the students and their teachers swelter for most of the year, too many consigned to stuffy, aging facilities ill-designed to capitalize on Hawaii’s cooling tradewinds, which are proven to blow less frequently these days, anyway.

It’s a travesty, truly — an embarrassment in a state that is demanding more and more of its students and teachers, yet fails to deliver the basic physical conditions, including comfortable classrooms that will help them meet those demands.

Perhaps this spring, as the weather warms up, key lawmakers and state Department of Education administrators need to take a field trip together, to some of the hottest classrooms in Hawaii, documented to regularly reach temperatures above 90 degrees. They should linger, not scurry outside as soon as they begin to sweat. After all, the students and teachers don’t have that luxury as their energy and focus lag in the afternoon heat.

Personal experience is a powerful motivator, and this issue deserves to be a higher priority.

In the meantime, lawmakers should use Senate Bill 2424 as a vehicle to spark innovative solutions to this problem. Having deferred Senate Bill 2559 — an expensive, ambitious proposal that would have mandated the installation of air conditioning in all Hawaii public schools by 2019, and which the Department of Education opposed — the Senate Education Committee advanced SB 2424, calling in part for the DOE to develop "a master strategy for cooling all public school facilities and conduct a comprehensive study that looks at estimated installation and maintenance costs."

The DOE insists that it already has such a strategy, and follows a priority list depending on the needs of the school and available funding. Twelve out of 255 campuses now have central air conditioning; five schools received it in the past 12 years. A separate measure in the House, HB 2596, would appropriate $25 million for the next three campuses on the list.

Clearly, gaining the necessary funding is an obstacle to quicker progress, but so is the behemoth statewide Department of Education, which by its very nature lacks the nimble, grassroots ingenuity that is called for here. Schools that want and need air conditioning should be encouraged to seek creative solutions that could be shared broadly if they work out well.

For example, solar energy technology is advancing so rapidly that some classrooms might be cooled much more cheaply than the DOE estimates, based on its conventional method of upgrading an old school’s electrical system to withstand the heavier usage, insulating all the classrooms to ensure energy-efficiency and then installing central air.

Testimony to the Senate Education Committee cited an alternative that costs far less. It involves installing photovoltaic panels on the school roof, storing the collected energy in a battery and using that battery to power the air conditioning.

The DOE should consider the potential of this "off-the-grid" approach, which eliminates the need for an expensive electrical upgrade, whether or not SB 2424 and its mandated study survive this legislative session.