For the students and teachers in portables around New Westminster, the arrival of summer heat waves is bad news.
Laura Kwong, chair of the New Westminster district parent advisory council, said the portables are too hot for learning. Her daughter is in a portable, and Kwong said the teacher is doing her best — taking kids out to the field to find shade or moving them into the main school to find space wherever they can.
“She’s trying to teach 30 kids in a hallway with kids walking by. She’s bringing freezies every day,” Kwong said. “I think it’s a huge challenge for teachers in portables right now.”
Kwong appeared in front of school trustees at their June 6 operations committee meeting to ask what the district’s plan is to address overheating in the portables.
It’s the second time in a short span that parents have turned out to ask the board for solutions around overheated portables, as Metro Vancouver has seen multiple days of 30 C-plus weather already this season.
At the May 23 school board meeting, a parent told trustees that her son came home from his day in a portable exhausted and sweaty.
“We build boxes on black asphalt, and we cannot expect kids to stay in them and learn there,” she said. “It’s not appropriate. It’s not good planning.”
The answer? There’s no simple solution.
Matt Brito, School District 40’s director of facilities, said one small portable air conditioning unit would have no effect in a portable classroom.
“To cool a portable with 30 kids, or 25-plus kids, with a 960-square-foot (space), you almost need about four of those portable air conditioners to even feel anything,” he said. “At that point you’re tripping breakers, and the electrical load on the portables just can’t be sustained.”
Secretary-treasurer Bettina Ketcham said the district’s team has been spending a great deal of time researching options and talking to other school districts about how they’re meeting the need for cooling.
“There really is no silver bullet or quick answer or efficient way to address this,” she said.
She pointed out that portables are funded from the district’s operating budget.
“When you add cooling units, they are $15,000 extra per portable. Multiplied by 50 portables, the number starts to get quite significant, and that’s presenting a real challenge,” she said.
Add in the challenges associated with electrical loads — which she noted vary from school to school — and Ketcham said there aren’t any easy answers.
“We’re working on it. It is a priority,” she said. “We’re well aware. We need a long-term strategy, and the only real mechanism here to stop the bleeding is trying to build those more permanent schools that simply can’t come fast enough, and we’re working hard on that too.”
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📢 SOUND OFF: Do you have a child learning in a portable in New West? Are you a teacher or a student affected by overheated classrooms? What should be done to help? Share your ideas — send us a letter.
