Air conditioning installations are increasing in Ventura County, and this trend is evident in the region’s schools.
Although this was once uncommon in school construction, air conditioning is now used in almost all public K-12 schools in the county.
Only five of the county’s 20 school districts told the Star they were not yet fully equipped. All of those districts are working to retrofit the few school campuses that are not yet air-conditioned. One school district, Ocean View Elementary, did not respond to requests for comment.
Oxnard Union, Santa Paula Unified, Ventura Unified, Rio Elementary and Hueneme Elementary school districts are currently installing air conditioning on their campuses, district leaders said. Much of the funding will be raised through bonds.
The change comes as Ventura County continues to warm and hot days become more common. The county has warmed more than any other in the lower 48 states since 1895, according to a 2019 Washington Post analysis.
In Oxnard, for example, the number of days with temperatures over 30 degrees Celsius has been increasing for decades, according to the National Weather Service. In the hottest years of the 1980s, there were 14 such days each year. In 2020 alone, there were 33.
“All I know is it’s hot, and it hasn’t been hot before,” said Tom McCoy, superintendent of the Oxnard Union High School District.
The district, which has more than 17,000 students, is completing a multi-year project to install air conditioning at its older campuses. McCoy said the latest, at Channel Islands High School, is about 80 percent complete.
When several of the district’s campuses were built between 1956 and 1966, air conditioning wasn’t necessary, he said. But in the last decade, McCoy said, temperatures have gotten hotter.
During the 2016-17 school year, the problem was so bad that the district made an agreement with the teachers union to shorten school days if the temperature was above 90 degrees Fahrenheit for three days in a row.
Ed Ransom, a teacher and union representative at Channel Islands High School, said there used to be one or two hot days during the school year, but “now it feels like there are three or four.”
“There are days when the humidity (in the classrooms) is very high because there are 30 to 35 people in there,” Ransom said.
When the sea breeze is not enough: Air conditioning spreads as Ventura County warms
At the two high schools in Camarillo, there were between five and ten heat-related shortened days per year between 2017 and 2020. At the Oxnard locations, there were between one and four days per year during the same period.
“We lost time,” McCoy said. “That was the birth of the larger project.”
Santa Paula is completing installations in four final classrooms at Santa Paula High School and plans to add units at Isbell Middle School in the coming years. The district’s rollout began in 2018 with a few units at some elementary schools and plans to upgrade electrical systems on old campus sites.
Rio plans to complete work on a final campus this summer, and Hueneme, which began its project in 2020, plans to complete its last campus this winter. Ventura equips four schools annually, with completion scheduled for 2027.
Isaiah Murtaugh covers education for the Ventura County Star in partnership with Report for America. Reach him at [email protected] or 805-437-0236 and follow him on Twitter @jesajamurtaugh And @SubscribeYou can support this work with a tax-deductible donation to Report for America.
