West Vancouver School District has installed mobile air scrubbers at two of its schools and is putting in the highest level of air filter available to help clean the air inside all classrooms as part of its COVID-19 response.
While schools have been advised to keep classroom windows open as much as possible to allow fresh air inside, “it’s definitely challenging in the winter,” noted Julia Leiterman, secretary treasurer for the school board at the October board meeting.
Two schools – Caulfeild and Eagle Harbour – were of particular concern because they don’t have modern heating and ventilation systems that most classrooms do.
To deal with the problem, the school district bought mobile air scrubbers for every classroom at those schools, said Leiterman.
And initial trial in two classrooms went well, she told the board. “So we went ahead and ordered them for all the classrooms” in those schools.
The air scrubbers – which cost a total of $70,000 – are now installed in 29 regular classrooms at Claulfeild and Eagle Harbour and in 11 portables throughout the school district.
West Vancouver is the first school district in Metro Vancouver to put the air scrubbers into use, she said.
In schools with more modern ventilation systems, the units in the classrooms have been reset to use 100 per cent fresh air. Usually the systems use a mixture of fresh and recirculated air to keep temperatures comfortable. “Now all our systems are programmed to 100 per cent fresh air all the time,” she said. “So the air will be colder, but it will be fresh.”
The systems are also running longer during the day, said Leiterman – starting two hours before anyone enters the building and continuing until after everyone leaves in the afternoon to provide a minimum of six air exchanges each day, she said.
The school district is also upgrading its air filters to the highest MERV13 standard available, which filters out the smallest particles, she said.
Those were ordered in summer but “they’re on backorder, because everybody wants them.”
Leiterman said she expects the high performance filters – which cost about $75,000 instead of about $7,000 for regular filters – will arrive in early December.
The new air filtering systems are among the measures being funded by the federal government to help school districts with the impact of COVID-19.
The West Vancouver School District received approximately $2.5 million in federal money and about $500,000 in provincial funding for that purpose.
About $169,000 of the federal funding was spent on ventilation systems, plexiglass barriers and hand santizer while $140,000 was spent on additional bus routes. The largest amount – about $616,000 – was spent on 13 extra teachers, two educational assistants, a youth worker and IT support for temporary programs providing access to online classes, as well as purchase of computers and technological upgrades.
The largest amount of provincial funds went to additional janitorial time, hand sanitizing stations and cleaning supplies. A smaller amount went to masks, face shields and computer equipment.
The North Vancouver School District also received government funding to help put COVID-19 safety measures in place. Those are set to be discussed at a special committee meeting Nov. 10.
