Denver Public Schools spending $1.5 million to track air quality in classrooms with new monitors [@mocoboe Refuses to Do This]

Devices will allow school district to better respond to COVID-19 pandemic, pollution issues

Denver Public Schools is taking steps to track the air quality in its classrooms by adding monitors in all of the district’s schools.

Air quality has become a major focus during the pandemic as researchers concluded ventilation can help slow the transmission of COVID-19, which is airborne. It’s also increasingly important as wildfire smoke often casts a haze over the city during the summer and other pollutants cause health issues, such as asthma, in children. 

“We should have been doing this a long time ago,” said Mark Hernandez, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder, adding, “You don’t want to be at increased risk for allergens or wildfire smoke.”

DPS has been planning to improve air quality in its buildings for “a while,” but the district’s budget has prevented it from buying monitors until now, spokesman Javier Ibarra said.

“COVID helped prompt all of this,” he said. “(But) it’s a long-term goal.”

DPS is spending $1.5 million on the monitors and expects to finish installing them by Sept. 1. The district is using federal COVID-19 stimulus money, known as ESSER funds, to pay for the monitors, which are part of a broader $25 million effort to improve air quality in the city’s schools, Ibarra said...

...DPS isn’t the only district working to improve air quality in its classrooms during the pandemic. Senseware’s monitors are in roughly 500 school buildings across the U.S., including in the Boulder Valley School District and classrooms in Washington, D.C...

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