In August of 2025 parents were notified that kindergarteners suffered heat exhaustion due to high temperatures and were asked to keep an eye on their students for the rest of the day. The kindergarten teachers requested swamp coolers be placed in their classrooms to avoid future incidents, but the PTSA mission requires us to do for all, what we do for one. Therefore, instead of exhausting Kindergarten field trip funds, or exhausting the PTSA emergency fund, we created the Cool Our School Initiative. 

The first measure was to discover why air conditioning units could not be donated by eager parents who were ambitious to cool their child's classroom. The DOE follows stringest engineering protocols, and our school's electrical grid is likely unable to withstand that many A/C units. A major step in this process was conduct a very expensive and timely electrical assessment that only the DOE can authorize.

The PTSA held it's 2025 Fun Run with the purpose of saving up money for this expense, and we successfully raised $30,000. Of those funds, approximately $2500 has been spent this pas summer on swamp coolers to outfit all Kindergarten and 1st grade classrooms ahead of the 2026 school year.

Also in the summer of 2026, we received fantastic news that Principal Nakamura successfully conducted that much needed electrical assessment in accordance with DOE protocol. We are currently awaiting the results of that study so we can create a road map to cooling all classrooms! In the meantime, we still need to raise funds to be ready to purchase enough air conditioning units for all classrooms, as well as for the maintenance they'll require year after year.

While we await those study results, Principal Nakamura & the PTSA also put in a request to add a cold water refill station inside the P.E. portable so that all students may benefit from the 2025 Fun Run fundraiser, which is estimated to cost approximately $14,000. The same refill station costs $7,000 in 2024 but due to changing labor/bid protocols these projects are more costly to ensure they are done correctly.