In record-breaking March heat recently, fans were the soundtrack of a newly renovated Millikan High School building — teachers’ makeshift solution to a nonfunctional heating and cooling system.
When about two dozen Millikan teachers moved into the newly upgraded English Language Arts building in January — part of a $79 million project including construction across three buildings — “We believed we’d come back to air conditioning,” one teacher told the Long Beach Post. Instead, classrooms were equipped with space heaters, which the teacher took as “evidence that we don’t actually have air conditioning,” she said. “That became the truth,” she added.
For years, urgency has been mounting for the district to install air conditioning in its schools. A decade ago, Long Beach voters approved a bond measure dedicating $1.5 billion to school repair and safety, including updating heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems. In 2022, after a heat wave and an increasing number of poor air quality days, LBUSD expedited the timeline for HVAC projects and announced nearly all schools would have air conditioning by the end of 2027. Millikan, Poly and Sato are the only high schools still awaiting new HVAC systems, according to the district’s site tracking bond measures. Some say it still isn’t happening fast enough.
Link
Four Millikan teachers assigned to the English Language Arts building spoke with the Long Beach Post and requested they not be named over fears of retaliation. They voiced frustration that they were placed “back in these classrooms obviously way too early,” one said, citing the lack of adequate cooling in particular…