Hot Winds Fuel Area’s Discomfort : Weather: The high temperatures are especially punishing on schoolchildren. Heat is expected to ease today.

Santa Ana winds continued an assault Monday on the San Fernando Valley, leaving hundreds of schoolchildren to bake in hot classrooms.

Temperatures reached 90 degrees in Burbank, 5 short of the record set in 1981, said Steve Burback of WeatherData Inc., which provides forecasts to The Times.

In Van Nuys and Northridge, temperatures rose to 89 degrees, according to the National Weather Service. WeatherData said the winds will die by Tuesday, when highs will reach the 80s under sunny and hazy skies with light winds.

“I wish it was winter all the time,” said Sandra Ponce, a fifth-grader in a classroom that is not air-conditioned at Fullbright Avenue School in Canoga Park. “Because then at least we have a heater to control the temperature.”

Fifth-grade teacher John Ingram said he knows his room is heating up when his students bring bottles of frozen water to class, and when they perspire so much that they stick to their chairs.

“It’s like this all day long . . . so we just live with it,” said Ingram, who said he sprays his students with water to cool them inside the classroom, where last year temperatures reached 106 degrees.

Throughout the Los Angeles Unified School District, 231 schools are fully air-conditioned, 47 schools are more than 50% and 185 schools are less than 50%, said Julie Crum, deputy director of the district’s maintenance and operations branch. Another 97 schools have no air conditioning.

On Monday, many at Fullbright sat groggily in their seats, sweat dampening some foreheads, as they fanned themselves with their name cards to beat the 90-degree temperatures.

Other teachers said they shut blinds and keep most lights off in their rooms in an attempt to preserve the cool morning air.

But just across the playground, students in Marci Bookbinder’s second-grade class were oblivious to what their peers were enduring, thanks to newly installed air-conditioning systems, courtesy of the school’s parent-teacher association.

“The classroom used to be so warm that the children would lie their heads down on their desks,” Bookbinder said. “Now it’s so cool that sometimes they want to put their jackets on. They stay alert, which is the biggest difference.”

“The heat would make me feel sweaty and it was hard to stay awake without the lights on all the time,” said Sean Puckett, a second-grader.

Puckett’s peer, Suleyma Cruz, agreed. “It felt boring in here before and I was unhappy,” Cruz said. “But now it feels good in here and so I feel good.”

School Principal Jim Grover said eight of the school’s 18 classrooms are air-conditioned. It will cost about $90,000 to finish air-conditioning the remaining 10 rooms.