By Jonathan Friedman
Associate Editor

October 1, 2014 -- Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District officials might not have been prepared to talk about the reported sweltering temperatures inside Edison Language Academy at the most recent Board of Education meeting. But it was the top topic of the September 18 meeting anyhow.

Several Edison parents and teachers pleaded with school officials during the public comment portion of the meeting to do something about the heat they say is affecting students’ ability to learn (“Parents, Teachers Angry About the Heat at Edison School,” September 29, 2014).

For the next school board meeting this Thursday, officials are prepared to discuss the subject in-depth, as it has been placed on the agenda.

“It is the district’s goal to communicate to the Board of Education and the public what has been done, what is currently underway, and what approach will be taken for short- and long-term objectives,” the agenda states.

The new Edison campus opened in January as a $33 million project funded through 2006 voter-approved Measure BB bond money (“Santa Monica-Malibu School District Opens New $33 Million Edison Language Academy Campus,” January 23, 2014). While many school facilities have received improvements with this bond money, Edison was the only one to be completely rebuilt.

District officials hailed the new campus as an environmentally friendly facility. Among the features is a so-called solar chimney that is used in place of air conditioning.

“The two-story tall solar chimneys gain large amounts of heat through sun exposure, which draws air from below as the hot air rises,” district officials said of the system earlier this year.

They continued, “Operable windows at the back of the classroom buildings allow cooler air to enter, which is then drawn up through the solar chimneys and out above the buildings, keeping a constant flow of cool, fresh air through the classrooms.”

However, it appears the system does not work as well as officials had hoped, if it does at all. Parents and teachers say temperatures have been well above 80 degrees, making student concentration difficult and at least one student had to go home due to heat-created illness.

“We cannot wait any longer,” PTA President Juanita Devis passionately told the board. “When you go inside these rooms, they are stuffy, they are hot, they are poorly ventilated. And our children are getting hurt by it … they’re not being able to learn as they are supposed to. If you don’t have enough oxygen in your brain, you cannot learn.”

State law prevented the school board members from directly responding to the speakers at the last meeting because the topic was not on the agenda. However, several board members said they were highly concerned about the situation, with Board President Maria Leon-Vazquez calling it "critical.”

Assistant Superintendent Jan Maez said the fresh eyes of a third party (not the district or the project manager) should look at the situation to determine what could be done to solve it. She said mistakes were made with this construction, although she did not label anybody as the specific person to blame.

“The expectation that [the solar chimney ] was going to cool the rooms like an air conditioning system would cool the rooms was outside what our expectations should have been,” Maez said.