90-Degree Heat Bakes Classrooms and Pupils

Hundreds of schoolchildren baked in hot classrooms Monday as Santa Ana winds assaulted the area, causing temperatures to rise into the 90s.

“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.”

Temperatures reached 90 degrees in Burbank, 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.

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

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

As in many schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District, only some of the classrooms at Fullbright Avenue are air-conditioned.

Ninety-seven schools have no air conditioning at all. Of the others, 231 schools are fully air-conditioned, 47 are more than 50% air-conditioned, and 185 are less than 50% air-conditioned, said Julie Crum, deputy director of the district’s maintenance and operations branch.

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

Some 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.

Principal Jim Grover said eight of the school’s 18 classrooms are air-conditioned. “The classroom used to be so warm that the children would lay 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.

It will cost an estimated $90,000 to finish air conditioning the remaining 10 rooms, Grover said.

Students may get relief today. According to WeatherData, the Santa Ana winds will die down and highs will be in the low 80s.