San Francisco schools to spend $2.9 million on classroom air purifiers

SAN FRANCISCO - San Francisco schools is looking at spending $2.9 million to get air purifiers into the district's classrooms. With more than 50,000 students, a pandemic and wildfires burning throughout the state, San Francisco's school board is poised to vote on purchasing as many as 3,700 air purifiers to distribute to classrooms throughout the city. 

Parents say they've been waiting on the district to take this step. "It was shocking to me to walk into school this year to see that there was no mitigation besides open windows; that there were no air purifiers in the classrooms," said Jiajing Liu.

The city's school reopening policy says classrooms have to provide adequate ventilation to help prevent COVID transmission. The district currently has about 700 air purifiers in about 10% of the classrooms.

In most schools, ventilation means simply opening the windows. With wildfires burning throughout the state, keeping windows open and allowing smoke inside may not be an option. 

"Tonight we're going to the board of education to request $2.9 million to buy another huge shipment of portable air cleaners, that we'll again, use for both wildfire smoke but also to continue our COVID-19 prevention deployment," said Dawn Kamalanathan, San Francisco's School District Chief Facilities Officer.

If the board approves, the new units would come in waves, with the first wave installed in some classrooms in about two weeks. The district said it understands that there may be frustration, but that it's been working hard to reopen schools safely.

"We are a school district that, we've had intense deadlines and limited resources, and we needed to make very strict priorities. And our priorities were COVID-19 prevention and compliance with Department of Public Health guidelines," said Kamalanathan.

San Francisco Unified School District said it had work out those reopening details, then researched which units would work well enough to clean the air, and not overtax schools electrical systems.

Other districts including Fremont, Mount Diablo and Oakland have already made the move to either install filters or purifiers in their schools. Oakland said it used federal funds to pay for the units in classrooms there, saying they're serving a dual purpose.

"If for no other reason than, it clears the air of impurities like airborne illness and kind of side benefit is the fact that the last few years we've dealt with smoky days and when that happens we have to close windows and close doors," said John Sasaki from Oakland Unified School District.

One of the things the city is trying to avoid is a patchwork network of air purifiers purchased by well-intended parents. The district says those units can be expensive and impossible to maintain. Instead the district is urging parents who want to help out to contribute to Spark SF Public Schools; a non-profit aimed at channeling charitable efforts and making them work for the city's schools.