Ventilation and Air Cleaners

How is the Air in Our Schools?

Based on the Harvard T.F. Chan School of Public Health’s Ventilation Guide for school classrooms, we created a table of Arlington schools and classrooms showing estimates for air quality related to pandemic measures.

The purpose of this analysis is to help APS implement targets for clean air fairly and correctly across all schools, and to make sure the rooms with low amounts of clean air — and larger volumes of air to clean —receive one or two air cleaners during the pandemic.

This is not intended to be a complicated mathematical modeling of variable outdoor air exchange rates in specific rooms, nor a complex engineering exercise. This is an estimation of need and intended to empower advocacy by school communities to speak up and ask for better air quality in all our schools.

APS can improve air quality in ALL classrooms during the pandemic, by putting certified portable air cleaning units in EVERY CLASSROOM. There is a commitment to do this, but APS’ list of classrooms and capacities shows about 1,800 learning spaces and relocatable classrooms. They have only ordered 1,650 portable air cleaning units.  APS has not released (or does not have) a list of air quality data for about 14% of its spaces, according to records provided to Smart Restart APS.

In addition, the rooms with the very worst air quality — and the lowest amount of fresh Outdoor Air — also need a SECOND air cleaner, to make sure those students have the same amount of virus-free air to breathe as those at newer school buildings. To date, APS has only committed to place second air cleaners in 22 classrooms, breaking numerous previous promises to teachers and parents that larger rooms and rooms with the worst air quality would receive two units.

The disparities between the amount of new, Outdoor Air that is brought into our buildings across APS is stark. For example, a student at Thomas Jefferson or Swanson middle schools can have 75% LESS fresh air being brought into their classroom than a student who gets to be inside H.B. Woodlawn’s new $100-million Heights building, because they won a lottery. This also means the TJ student in that poorly ventilated room takes on a greater risk of catching COVID-19 in their classroom, compared to a student at the Heights. APS could put a second air cleaner in these rooms at schools such as TJ, Barcroft, Wakefield, or others, to address this. APS administrators have chosen not to do this.

If any of this changes, we will update this page.

We calculate that APS would need to purchase about 1,300 more air cleaners to provide all students and staff with an excellent level of highly filtered, clean air, during the pandemic.

Here is a list of schools where APS has decided to allow students to have WORSE air quality during the pandemic — about 450 total rooms that need a SECOND air cleaner to reach more than 5 air changes per hour of effective clean air. These are also the rooms that do not have as much Outdoor Air being brought into them.

In addition, APS’ engineers left off nearly 300 rooms from their calculations. APS said it would place students in these rooms in a different database. So we don’t know if APS counted these rooms as needing an air cleaner at all. Our school HVAC systems simply do not have the recommended level of filtration to remove “particles of concern,” so all occupied rooms need air cleaners that can remove 99.97% of particles, per ASHRAE guidance.

In addition: 

• Teachers and staff share office spaces in many buildings that are not be designed to have the same ventilation as classrooms. They have requested at least 10 extra air cleaners to position in such spaces. That would require about 380 more units. Office spaces may — by design — have about one sixth of the fresh air coming in as classroom spaces in our schools. Since APS won’t provide such units, we know of many staff members who are purchasing their own. This is where APS is penny-wise and pound foolish. If someone in a shared office space gets sick or exposed, they may be out for two weeks. That’s a much higher cost than the $300 air cleaner unit that could have helped prevent people in that shared space from getting sick.
• Teachers have also suggested that extra portable air cleaning units should be on hand at schools for days when HVAC systems have completely stopped working, so there may be little or no airflow at all to a room, until maintenance can arrive to fix the problem. And schools should have a plan to move students from a room with non-functional airflow, if necessary.

It is a shame to know that children and staff at schools such as Jamestown, Montessori, Arlington Traditional, Barcroft, Thomas Jefferson, Swanson, Williamsburg, Wakefield, etc., will not have an excellent or ideal level of air quality.  A goal of our return to school plans should have been fairness and equity. These schools have more rooms that need two air cleaners.

At a cost of about $300 each, adding portable air cleaners to classrooms is a cost effective way to reduce risks and give kids more super clean air to breathe. In addition, this is easier to implement than major HVAC improvements that APS is planning for 19 schools, after its internal review of HVAC systems last summer and fall.

Arlington Public Schools Air Quality Data

Search for your classroom by typing your school name. You can add the room number or grade level if you know it.
For example, type “Jefferson 224” or “Fleet kindergarten” and click the green + sign for more details.