Cool Reception Expected for Granada Hills Students

Granada Hills High School teacher Stephanie Schwartz is looking forward to a chilly reception today when she returns to school.

After weeks of often oppressive heat, a pair of air conditioners--donated to the school after Schwartz appealed to local companies--were finally installed Monday in her classroom, ending a quest for a more bearable learning environment that began when school resumed last month.

“Oh my God, I may have a nervous breakdown,” Schwartz said from her Canyon Country home when told that workers were installing the air conditioners. She had taken the day off to observe the Jewish New Year.

Meanwhile, the mercury on Monday rocketed past the century mark across the San Fernando Valley.

Schwartz’s campaign to air-condition Room B-8 for her 160 English students started in August after an opening week of school that also included triple-digit temperatures. Campuses across the Valley dismissed classes early and scaled back outdoor activities to beat the searing heat and protect students’ health.

But Schwartz fumed at classroom conditions that she found intolerable.

“I got really frustrated, and I opened up the Yellow Pages and started calling air-conditioning places,” she said. “How do you survive in heat like this with kids in a classroom? I’ve been at this for 23 years, and things are bad enough.”

Although several businesses gave her the cold shoulder, two local companies pledged three new air conditioners. Schwartz also secured a fourth unit from neighbors who no longer needed the unit, collecting enough cooling systems to grant relief to students in two classrooms.

The campus booster club then agreed to pay installation costs, which Los Angeles Unified School District officials put at $923 per pair, well below what private contractors had estimated. Thursday, the club gave the district the formal go-ahead with the project, including Schwartz’s classroom and another to be air-conditioned within a few weeks.

“It’s a start,” Peter Chan, vice president of the booster club, said. “This is kind of a Band-Aid, because these units only last about five years. . . . They don’t really lower the temperature that much. They lower the temperature to about 80 degrees, but that’s better than a classroom that’s 105 degrees.”

His organization is mounting its own campaign to raise $350,000 over the next few years to air-condition the entire school, which is still mostly un-air-conditioned, Principal Anne Falotico said.

“It’s sort of a drop in the bucket for the entire school,” she said, but added, “Anything that we can get, we’re very happy to get.”

For her part, Schwartz said she did not expect any response to her appeals but was glad to see her persistence with companies and with the school district pay off.

“It’s the squeaky wheel . . . that gets things done,” she said.