Students Swelter; District Vows Relief

With a summer heat wave sweeping the region, parents at Fourth Street Elementary School in East Los Angeles are upset with district officials because hundreds of students are having to endure 90-degree-plus temperatures in classrooms without air conditioning.

More than 300 parents signed a petition this week urging Los Angeles Unified School District officials to repair faulty air conditioners for 23 of the school’s 47 classrooms. The school -- one of 208 year-round campuses in the district -- expected new air conditioning units before summer but was told this week by the district that they wouldn’t arrive until January.

“I’m outraged that they would have a year-round school and not have working air conditioning units during the summer,” said Irene Cruces, whose 9-year-old son, Joshua Valdez, is a fourth-grader. “The school needs to see that this is not healthy for the students.”

District officials said a technician should have all of the school’s air conditioning units running by Wednesday.

Nearly 500 students have been affected.

“We obviously are trying to rectify the problem,” said Pete Petito, a district facilities director. “We’re not ignoring them. The problem is too few technicians” and too many aging air conditioners.

All of the district’s 908 schools have air conditioners, except for 150 portable classrooms. Petito’s department, with 11 technicians, is responsible for 116 schools. The department receives as many as 40 phone calls a day about broken air conditioners, many of which are old and repeatedly break down, he said.

At Fourth Street, officials and parents said the district should have informed them sooner about the delay of the new air conditioning units. The $851,000 cost of five new air conditioning units for the school’s main buildings was funded through 1997’s Proposition BB, district officials said. Delays and cost overruns have plagued projects made possible by the $2.4-billion bond.

Meanwhile, parents are not the only ones upset.

The temperature in teacher Keith Gage’s classroom reached 96 degrees Friday -- even with five fans running -- because the classroom’s air conditioning unit hasn’t run for nearly three weeks.

“I have students complaining of headaches and bloody noses and nausea,” Gage said. “It’s so loud in the classroom; the doors are open, the fans are running, and the construction site is across the street. It’s so hard to get anything taught.”