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Maya Pueo von Geldern, a parent whose third and seventh graders attend Vernon K-8 School, once lived in Pacific Palisades, and members of her family have lost homes to the wildfires ravaging Los Angeles. “It’s been debilitating for the last week,” she says.
Von Geldern wants to do anything in her power to help L.A. But she’s not impressed by what the Portland Public Schools Board actually did. Last week, it authorized Superintendent Dr. Kimberlee Armstrong to send 2,000 air purifiers in storage to Los Angeles United School District so students there can return to school without breathing in toxic fumes, including asbestos.
Von Geldern and other parents say PPS is sending air purifiers to another city before fulfilling its promise, made two years ago, to install two such machines in every classroom in the district.
“I care. I just don’t think that we’re in a position to be the ones to come in and help right now,” von Geldern says. “We just don’t have the resources. It’s an unfair situation to say that these are just lying around when no one knew that they existed in the first place.”
The Portland district’s poor indoor air quality became a hot topic during the pandemic. The low numbers it reported led to outcry from parents and, ultimately, a May 2023 donation of 3,500 air purifiers to PPS by the Oregon Health Authority. But five parents, teachers and advocates tell WW that many of those air purifiers never made it into Portland classrooms.
When the district announced OHA’s donation of air purifiers and a five year supply of filters, the news also came with a promise. In an email dated May 2, 2023, Dan Jung, PPS’s chief operating officer, and Jon Franco, the district’s chief of schools, wrote that they “anticipate each PPS classroom will have two air purifiers sharing the work to cleanse the air and boost the number of air changes per hour.”
In that email, officials wrote the donation would complement the 5,464 existing purifiers in the Portland district. That suggests 6,364 purifiers exist across the district. PPS has not said how many of those air purifiers made it into classrooms, however. Now that the district is sending 2,000 purifiers to L.A., it says it still has 600 in storage. It’s not immediately clear how many purifiers PPS needs to complete the task it set for itself in 2023.
What is clear, however, is that the district hasn’t completed its pledge of two purifiers in every one of its classrooms. Air quality advocates tell WW they fought for two because running one purifier at full speed is loud and disrupts learning. Running two at lower speeds compensates for the lower effectiveness.
Aaron Condron-Lee, a second grade teacher at Scott Elementary, confirms that his classroom, and others at his school, still have only one air purifier. He adds he can’t run it at full speed. “It’s like running an industrial fan in your classroom,” he says. “You have to raise your voice extremely loud.”
He says one isn’t enough. The former dance teacher at Scott, for instance, faced constant respiratory problems in her portable classroom until she was moved into the cafeteria. He says the current teacher faces similar problems.
Sydney Kelly, a PPS spokeswoman, tells WW that “every classroom is equipped with at least one air purifier, in some cases more than one. All schools are able to request additional purifiers as needed.”
Why back off the promise? School Board chair Eddie Wang says the district faced many challenges as it tried to implement its commitment, including a skeleton crew in its maintenance department and budget cuts. “I understand from the district’s perspective why there’s been kind of a pause on this,” he says. “I think the barriers are kind of overwhelming.”
The district, meanwhile, denies that it gave away air purifiers needed in classrooms.
“The air quality in Portland Public Schools is safe and complies with all indoor air quality regulations,” Jung wrote in a statement to WW. “PPS works closely with leading air quality experts to ensure that we adhere to the industry standards.”
Effie Greathouse, a Hayhurst Elementary School parent, heard about the School Board’s decision to donate 2,000 air purifiers when another advocate texted her after the Jan. 13 meeting. She’s been alarmed ever since.
“I really admire and respect the board’s thinking and caring about kids in L.A.,” she says, “but it was not a considered decision. The vote was made with inaccurate information and a lack of understanding about the unmet needs of our kids and staff.”
Greathouse, a stream ecologist, has studied both water and outdoor air quality over the years. But indoor air quality became her concern during the pandemic because if it’s poor, it can lead to the spread of disease and other health pollutants. Studies have found, she adds, correlations between cleaner indoor air and student performance in schools.
When Portland Public Schools partnered with PBS Engineering and Environmental and Ameresco, an engineering services company, to survey airflow in its classrooms during the 2021–22 school year, the results weren’t pretty. The findings, first reported by The Oregonian, revealed about 500, or 25%, of the district’s elementary and middle school classrooms didn’t meet minimum targets of three air changes an hour. Another 750 didn’t meet the number of changes recommended by air quality experts, who say a better number to shoot for is six.
Greathouse founded Safe Indoor Air For Oregon Schools, a parent group that advocates for better ventilation in PPS classrooms and analyzes district air quality data, in 2022. The group advocated for the district to request more purifiers from OHA. But after the donation, Greathouse says, the district complicated its distribution process.
In a memo PPS provided to WW that was sent to principals on Aug. 31, 2023, almost five months after the May email, the district said it would instead automatically provide additional air purifiers to only 28 specific schools that it had determined were behind six air changes per hour.
The district determined its other 68 schools at the time were above the six air changes per hour threshold. (Safe Indoor Air disputes these numbers.) If principals were interested, the memo told them they could request more air purifiers.
Von Geldern helped notify the principal at Vernon that he’d have to request extra air purifiers from the district for his school’s classrooms. She says that once the Vernon principal was aware he could request purifiers, he did so within 15 minutes. She says she’s sure there are other PPS principals who haven’t done so.
That’s the case at Scott, says Condron-Lee, the teacher there. The school was not on the list of 28 that automatically received purifiers. But he says the kids there need them.
“L.A. needs all the help it can get,” he says. “And what about my students?”
School Board members, including Wang and vice chair Michelle DePass, say they believe the purifiers are still better in Los Angeles than in Portland.
“The magnitude of need in Los Angeles is much greater than it is in any one of our classrooms,” DePass says. “Sometimes I’m not proud of the district. This one time, I was so proud to be part of a response to kids that I know are hurting beyond what any of us can imagine.”
Wang agrees, but he apologizes for not consulting with Greathouse’s group. “This is something that they’ve been working on for so long, and we just suddenly made a decision without even talking to them,” he says.
“I feel horrible for it, so I am going to commit myself to working with this group to rectify the situation,” he adds. “I am working with the chief of staff to figure out if we can get the district to commit to get these [remaining purifiers] into classrooms as soon as possible. If we can do that, that would be light years beyond what it was already.”
School Board member Julia Brim-Edwards says if the resolution were to come around again, she’d approve it after the district provided evidence that substantiated that the purifiers were surplus. She says she hasn’t received such evidence in the days since the Jan. 13 vote, even though she’s requested it. “I was part of the community ask for the air purifiers earlier, and the case was made then that they were needed,” she adds.
Parents whom WW spoke to have said they hope the air purifiers can return to the district in some form. But Kelly, the PPS spokeswoman, tells WW the district does not expect L.A. Unified to return the donated air purifiers.
“If it’s too late to change, it is what it is,” von Geldern says. “But I think they owe the community an apology for having made this decision without really looking into how it was going to harm our kids.”