Most Ventura County schools have air conditioning. These districts are still installing

Air conditioning is on the rise in Ventura County, and the trend is clearly captured in the area's schools.

Once uncommon in school construction, air conditioning units now run in nearly all of the county's public K-12 schools.

Only five of the 20 county school districts told the Star they aren't yet fully kitted out, and all of those districts are working to retrofit the few campuses that remain unconditioned. One school district, Ocean View Elementary, did not respond to inquiries.

Oxnard Union, Santa Paula Unified, Ventura Unified, Rio Elementary and Hueneme Elementary school districts are installing campus air conditioning, district leaders said, much of it funded by bond money.

The shift comes as Ventura County continues to get progressively hotter and as hot days get more and more common. The county has warmed more than any other in the lower 48 states since 1895, according to a 2019 Washington Post analysis .

In Oxnard, for example, the number of days over 85 degrees each year has been ratcheting up for decades, according to the National Weather Service. The hottest years of the 1980s both had 14 such days. In 2020 alone, there were 33.

"All I know is it's hot, and it didn't used to be hot," Oxnard Union High School District Superintendent Tom McCoy said.

The district of more than 17,000 high students is wrapping up a multiyear effort to install air conditioning across its older campuses, and McCoy said the last, Channel Islands High School, is about 80% complete.

When several of the district's campuses were built between 1956 and 1966 air conditioning wasn't needed, he said. But in the last 10 years, McCoy said, things started heating up.

By 2016-17, the problem was so bad that the district struck a deal with its teachers union to shorten school days when the temperature was over 90 degrees Fahrenheit for three straight days.

Ed Ransom, a teacher and union representative at Channel Islands High School, said school years used to have one or two hot days, but "now it feels like it's three or four."

"There's days that it's going to be really high humidity (in classrooms) because there's 30 to 35 bodies in there," Ransom said.

When ocean breezes aren't enough: Air conditioning spreads as Ventura County heats up

The two Camarillo high schools each had between five and 10 heat-shortened days a year between 2017 and 2020. The Oxnard campuses all had between one and four days a year in the same period.

"We were losing time," McCoy said. "That was the genesis of the larger project."

Santa Paula is completing installs at four final classrooms at Santa Paula High School and plans to add units at Isbell Middle School in the coming years. The district's rollout started in 2018 with a trickle of units at some elementary schools and plans to update electrical systems across old campuses.

Rio plans to complete work at one last campus this summer and Hueneme, which started its project in 2020, plans to be done with its last campus this winter. Ventura is outfitting four schools a year, with plans to be done in 2027.

Isaiah Murtaugh covers education for the Ventura County Star in partnership with Report for America. Reach him at isaiah.murtaugh@vcstar.com or 805-437-0236 and follow him on Twitter @ isaiahmurtaugh and @ vcsschools . You can support this work with a tax-deductible donation to Report for America .

This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Most Ventura County schools have air conditioning. These districts are still installing