In 2017, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio promised that every public-school classroom in the city would have air conditioning by 2022. That project will be completed a year ahead of schedule, but at a significantly higher cost than originally anticipated. In 2019, the capital construction costs to install window unit air conditioning in over 13,000 public school classrooms rose to $334 million — seven times the estimate from two years prior.
This $334 million bill to cool roughly a quarter of city classrooms would translate into over $1.3 billion for all the city’s classrooms, a total that is still substantially lower than our study’s estimate of $5.3 billion to install HVAC systems. Due to budgetary constraints and the complexity of retrofitting older buildings, New York City and many other urban school districts have chosen to install window units at a cheaper up-front cost than HVAC systems. However, window units can be far more expensive to operate and maintain, have about one-third the lifespan of a central AC system, do not provide adequate ventilation in classrooms, and often fail to cool other critical parts of the school such as auditoriums, gymnasiums, offices, and cafeterias.
New York City’s Department of Education says it has allocated $275.8 million toward its cooling project under a capital plan, which includes providing the infrastructure needed at older schools to support the additional electrical load of window air-conditioning units. “Every student and staff member deserves a comfortable and safe learning environment, and we’ve been working hard to bring air conditioning to every classroom citywide over the past three years,” Sarah Casasnovas, Associate Press Secretary for the district, wrote in an email.
In the past, funding for window air-conditioning installation and repair came directly out of each individual school’s budget, which many schools could not afford. Of the schools that were able to access funding for additional air-conditioning units, some faced added hurdles when their older buildings failed to handle the extra electrical load.
“The Mayor’s initiative to have air conditioning in every classroom by 2021 addresses some of these issues by centrally funding the cost of electrical upgrades and window air conditioning units,” Jennifer Long, industrial hygienist for the United Federation of Teachers’ Safety and Health department, said in an email. “In the long run, I expect air conditioning all classrooms will make a big difference in the learning outcomes of students in NYC, but of course, also push against some of the sustainability goals of this city. Ultimately, I believe we need to start thinking of investing in the modernization of our older school buildings with more energy-efficient central heating, cooling, and ventilating systems.”
In the meantime, extreme temperatures are impacting students and staff during the school year. “With climate change, we are seeing hotter and longer summers,” Long said. “In buildings with no air conditioning, this can make for uncomfortable learning environments and limits our ability to utilize some school buildings for summer remediation and enrichment programs. Worst case, it can be dangerous for older and/or medically frail staff and students in schools.”
Excessive heat is a health risk to all New York City residents, but especially its low-income communities and people of color, who live in areas with heightened industrial pollution and often less access to air conditioning. While Black residents make up less than 25 percent of the city’s population, they accounted for nearly half of its heat-related deaths between 2000 and 2012. More than half of the city’s public housing residents live in its most heat-vulnerable neighborhoods, according to a NYC Environmental Justice Coalition analysis.
The problem applies to the schools that serve those neighborhoods, too. “Our data suggests that up to 7% of racial achievement gaps can be attributed to the combined influence of more hot days and hotter classrooms for African-American and Hispanic students,” wrote R. Jisung Park, coauthor of research on the link between heat and learning casualties, in a 2019 op-ed for USA Today.
Until all its schools have air conditioning, New York City will need to prepare for rising temperatures in the classroom. In 2018, the state teachers union called for legislation to implement a new kind of snow day — “extreme heat condition days” — and close schools if temperatures inside exceeded 88°F.
The New York City Department of Education will incur some of the highest cooling costs in the country. To read more about all of New York’s schools, check out the New York state page.