Temperatures in hundreds of public school classrooms could soon be on the decline, with an agreement Friday by lawmakers to invest $100 million toward cooling efforts such as air conditioning.
House and Senate leaders advanced Senate Bill 3126 Opens in a new tab out of conference committee shortly before an internal deadline Friday night. The measure, which next heads for floor votes in the House and Senate, allocates general funds, or cash from the general treasury, for equipment and installation costs for air conditioning and other energy efficiency measures related to so-called heat abatement at public schools.
The general funds represent a shift from past practice. Lawmakers previously would provide the Department of Education with money for heat abatement through lump-sum bond funds as part of its overall capital improvements budget. As a result, school air-conditioning projects would have to compete with other facilities projects within the DOE’s budget, often leaving only a few million dollars a year for cooling efforts.
“I look forward to seeing this stuff get done,” said Rep. Chris Lee (D, Kailua-Lanikai-Waimanalo), chairman of the Energy and Environmental Protection Committee and one of the lead negotiators on the bill for the House.
“So do I,” added Sen Michelle Kidani (D, Mililani-
Waikele-Kunia), chairwoman of the Senate Education Committee and a lead negotiator for the Senate.
The funding is tied to Gov. David Ige’s pledge to cool 1,000 classrooms by the end of 2016. In his State of the State address in January, Ige proposed the state borrow $100 million in Green Energy Market Securitization, or GEMS, funds to quickly install energy efficiency equipment and air conditioners in the 1,000 classrooms. Ige then wrote to House and Senate lawmakers in February and again in March requesting “immediate consideration and passage” of bills that would allow the schools cooling initiative to move forward quickly.
An earlier House bill proposed using a combination of borrowed GEMS funds and state-backed bonds for the effort, but some lawmakers were uncomfortable about paying interest on the loaned money. An earlier proposal to include an additional $30 million in state-backed bonds for the effort also was rejected.
Lawmakers on Friday changed the bill’s effective date from July 1 to “upon approval,” meaning the funds could be expedited once the measure becomes law. DOE officials told the Board of Education last week that the department plans to begin soliciting bids for the work in mid-May in hopes of starting installation work during the summer break.
“We’ll make that money go as far as it can go,” said Donalyn Dela Cruz, spokeswoman for the Department of Education. “Due to energy efficiency measures we have in place, the $100 million will cover the 1,000 classrooms. We’re hoping to go beyond that.”
Air conditioning is one piece of the DOE’s heat abatement program. The department’s goal is for classroom temperatures to be at 76 degrees. Mechanical cooling is planned for classrooms in which heat abatement efforts — such as ceiling fans, solar-powered vents to draw out hot air, and heat-reflective roof systems — don’t sufficiently bring down the temperature.
Of the 11,820 DOE classrooms across the state, roughly 4,400 classrooms had air conditioning as of last week, according to department data. Forty-nine schools — or 19 percent of DOE schools — have at least 90 percent of their classrooms air-conditioned.
Corey Rosenlee, president of the Hawaii State Teachers Association and a longtime advocate for cooling public school classrooms, called the bill’s passage a victory.
“Today was a huge victory for students across the state who will finally be able to focus on their learning rather than the heat,” Rosenlee, who was traveling Friday, said in a statement. “We are so grateful that lawmakers are helping to improve the learning environment for students across the state by cooling these classrooms.
“This money is going to allow us to experiment and bring the cost of air-conditioning classrooms down,” he added, citing the example of two Molokai schools that recently installed solar-powered air conditioning.
The DOE came under intense public criticism last summer as temperatures reached record highs and teachers, students and parents complained about the sweltering conditions, which can make it hard to concentrate and became a health hazard in some cases.
At the start of the school year in August, Kalaheo High School science teacher Micah Pregitzer said he recorded temperatures over 100 degrees on a couple of afternoons.
“And we’re on the Windward side, where there’s a breeze most of the time. I know it’s nothing like the Leeward side, so I can’t even imagine what they were dealing with,” Pregitzer said. “It definitely puts a drain on everyone, especially in the afternoon. Everybody’s dragging, attention spans are extremely short, everybody’s tired. And at the end of the day, both the teachers and the students are just not with it.”
He added that he’s “super grateful that schools will start getting some relief” with the legislative funding.
A similar House bill that at one time also included funding for the initiative was amended to include language aimed at curbing energy consumption and costs at schools. The DOE already has a $48 million annual utility budget without the anticipated influx of air conditioners.
HB 2569 Opens in a new tab, which also advanced out of conference committee Friday, would
require the DOE to establish a goal of becoming net-zero with respect to energy use, meaning the department would need to produce as much renewable energy as it consumes across all public school facilities. It imposes an annual reporting requirement on the department’s plans to meet that goal and its overall progress.
