As New York City teachers returned to classrooms on Tuesday to start preparation for the school year, the city released ventilation reports for all the schools in the public school system — 1,485 reports in all were posted on the Department of Education’s website.
Mayor Bill de Blasio pointed to the reports as proof that most New York City classrooms "are ready right now" ahead of the September 21st first day of in-person learning.
”I'm going to affirm what the Chancellor and I have said many times, if any classroom is not ready, it will not be used. It would only be used when it's ready,” de Blasio said at his Tuesday press briefing. “But, thank God, the overwhelming majority of classrooms are ready right now.”
“We found that the ventilation in more than 95 percent of our classrooms is in good working order. Out of the 64,000 classrooms we surveyed, fewer than 3,000 had issues,” the DOE said in a press release. “These results for individual schools are preliminary and are intended to help focus our repair and maintenance efforts. They do not indicate any space’s ability to open on Monday, September 21st, as we are continuing to repair and correct any outstanding ventilation issues.”
Scrutiny of school ventilation has increased alongside evidence of how much COVID-19 spreads by air. The conditions of the city’s school buildings — some windowless, some with basement classrooms — became a flashpoint for the United Federation of Teachers union which demanded upgraded ventilation in schools before they agreed to a plan to reopen on September 21st.
But the DOE hasn’t released details of its criteria on what they consider to be sufficient airflow inside school buildings, so parsing the meaning behind the ventilation reports can be difficult.
Each school’s report shows how the building’s rooms are judged in six categories:
- Primary Usage? (Student-Staff Space/ Building Support Space/ Inaccessible/ Room Not Found)
- Windows? (Yes/No)
- At least one window can be opened? (Yes/No)
- Supply Fan (Operational/ Partially Operational/ Not Operational/ Doesn't Exist/ Cannot Access )
- Exhaust Fan (Operational/ Partially Operational/ Not Operational/ Doesn't Exist/ Cannot Access)
- Unit Ventilators(Operational/ Partially Operational/ Not Operational/ Doesn't Exist/ Cannot Access )
Virginia Tech’s Dr. Linsey Marr, one of the world’s leading scientists on airborne viruses, called the reports a “good starting point” as she looked at one ventilation report for P.S. 20 in Clinton Hill.
“For example, in this school it's good that almost all the windows can be opened,” Marr said in a phone interview with Gothamist on Tuesday. “And then they did look at whether there's a supply fan or an exhaust fan for the rooms, and whether they're operational.”
“So it's great that they know whether rooms have those and whether they work or not,” she added.
Still, more information would be welcomed, Marr said — she noted she would want to see “what the actual flow rates are, or air exchange rates or ventilation rates that we call them."
“It would be nice to know for these fans, the supply and exhaust fans, what are the flow rates on those,” she added. “But that information is much harder to get,” and would take hours per room monitoring with special equipment.
The more detailed airflow information that Marr referenced is being monitored by the city, said Lorraine Grillo, president of the School Construction Authority, though she didn’t give specifics on what constitutes acceptable conditions.
“We're working closely with our partners in the unions who have been working on random testing... the CO2 rates, the (Cubic feet per minute air flow) rate, those kinds of engineering type words, they have been working on that as well,” Grillo said at the press briefing Tuesday.
The ventilation reports at least can help answer a baseline question for parents and DOE staff in making decisions about returning to school, Marr said: “are the windows open or the fans running?” But the mere presence of fans and HVAC systems isn’t enough information, Marr pointed out: “just because they're operational or not doesn't mean that they're turned on."
Ten school buildings were deemed by the DOE to have insufficient airflow this week, and the city directed those staff to work remotely until the problems were resolved. Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza said those buildings need work that he considered “minor and not capital. So there are little things that need to be done, but keeping our promise, we said we would make sure that everybody has functioning ventilation,” he said at Tuesday’s briefing.
And while the majority of classrooms have been deemed acceptable by the DOE, the reports also show that 13,248 restrooms — or 57 percent of all school restrooms — need repairs to improve airflow quality.
Still, Marr cautioned that ventilation is just one tool in curbing the spread of COVID-19. “You don't want to rely on ventilation alone,” she said. “We need multiple strategies here. Not one strategy is perfect or is going to get you all the way there. But when you combine multiple strategies, you can get a large reduction in risk of transmission.” And New York City has a rare opportunity with its schools reopening plan, she said: “The positivity rate in cases in New York City, they look really good.”
“It'll be interesting to see what happens,” Marr added. “I think New York City's cases are under control. So yeah, it's good that the kids are going back to school.”
