Parent-Led Carbon Dioxide Measurements Raise Concerns About Air Quality and COVID-19 Risks in Wake County Schools

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

A grassroots group of parents, the NC Alliance for School Equity & Safety (NCASES), publicly released thousands of parent-led air quality measurements taken over several weeks in Wake County Public Schools (WCPSS) classrooms and an area Charter. 

“The air quality we measured in these schools, and in particular older buildings and portables, were quite alarming to us,” Kira Kroboth said. “We feel a responsibility to share with both the schools and the public. We hope they will do their own assessments, report their results and fix what they find.” 

New CDC guidance on safely running schools continues to recommend upgrading heating ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems to minimize the risk of COVID-19 transmission. Federal monies through several programs, such as the Department of Education and the Governor’s Emergency Relief Fund, can be used to pay for these upgrades.

“HVAC upgrades are the least divisive COVID mitigation strategy,” Kroboth said. “Who doesn’t want their kids breathing clean air – especially if it can reduce sickness and the funding has been provided?”  

Kroboth is the founder and organizer of an online community of 1,700 North Carolina parents. According to Kroboth, many of the most active parents in her group, like her, have a child or family member at high risk for poor COVID-19 outcomes. 

As parents compared notes on this years’ COVID precautions, they wondered whether schools had actually improved their HVAC systems as claimed. With no data available for their schools, they decided to just check for themselves.

Sharing Sensors

“I’m a bit of a COVID nerd.” Joseph Chancellor, a member of the NCASES parent group, said. “I’d already read papers highlighting carbon dioxide as a way to assess COVID risk and, I bought a carbon dioxide sensor, an Aranet 4, for traveling.” 

Chancellor took his sensor to parent orientation. 

“In all honesty, the readings weren’t good,” Chancellor said. “I sent in two sensors with my kids on the first day of school. Those readings weren’t great either.”

WCPSS parent Kimberly Matsune, herself the parent of high risk children, borrowed a sensor and sent it to two WCPSS campuses attended by her children. She was concerned by the measurements.

“The district has told us repeatedly we have higher grade filters in the HVAC in addition to properly maintained and operational HVAC systems, so you’d expect these numbers to be far better than they are. Why has our district ignored the necessary work to keep our kids safe and breathing quality air for six hours a day?” Matsune said. 

Process, Progress and Goals

NCASES has taken thousands of carbon dioxide readings across six different school locations, and now has four sensors they loan out to interested parents. Data from three more schools will be added in the coming week. 

NCASES created a process for concerned parents to borrow carbon dioxide (CO2) monitors for their school(s). The group briefs parents about measuring carbon dioxide, loans out sensors, instructs on how to take reliable measurements and consolidates the resulting data in a GitHub repository. They are also giving tips on parent-led carbon dioxide monitoring in schools to other parent groups around the US. 

"These North Carolina parents are not alone in their concerns. We've been in touch with hundreds of parents in more than 30 states, who are all asking schools for transparent information about school ventilation. Parents have a right to know whether their schools applied the unprecedented money available through federal funding programs like ESSER I, II, and III to adopt proven, authoritative recommendations from the CDC, the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), EPA, and others, dating back to 2020,” said Michael Bailey, a parent, national air quality advocate, and founder of Indoor Air Care Advocates. 

Within WCPSS

According to Kroboth, they’ve shared their early data with WCPSS school administrators and started conversations on the importance of measuring and improving school air quality. 

“We do not claim to be or pretend to be HVAC experts. We are concerned parents. We have, however, consulted with air quality experts and engineers who agree our schools need to verify the ventilation after seeing our measurements,” Kroboth explained.

The NCASES parent data suggests there is a lot of variability in air quality between buildings and schools, even within the same school district. 

“Our carbon dioxide data plus the hit-or-miss addition of portable HEPA filters in classrooms – provided by PTAs, teachers and parents – highlights the inequities of air quality in Wake County schools.” Kroboth said. 

According to the CDC and international research, bringing ventilation to recommended levels and supplementing with HEPA filters can provide a more than 80% reduction in exposure/transmission and a 48% reduction in incidence of COVID and other airborne illness. But these need to be systematic in order to see the full benefits.

The Importance of Ventilation

“Some of the data we are gathering shows CO2 levels high enough to impact cognitive functioning of our students and educators. Adequate ventilation should be a priority for our schools, especially as we focus on learning loss and aim to keep our kids in the building safely learning,” Kroboth emphasized.

Adequate ventilation based on proven recommendations by the CDC, EPA and ASHRAE will directly address learning disruption, increased chronic absenteeism and public health issues from the COVID pandemic. 

Even in a future scenario where COVID is no longer a direct threat to attendance, the current opportunity to improve ventilation and air quality offers benefits of improved student 

cognition, teacher effectiveness, test scores and consequent school performance that will far outlast the pandemic.

BACKGROUND

Why Measure Carbon Dioxide?

Monitoring carbon dioxide (CO2) helps measure the effectiveness of ventilation by comparing indoor CO2 levels to outside CO2 levels. Indoors, the primary source of CO2 indoors is human respiration – that is, people breathing out. A high level of CO2 indoors indicates that occupants are rebreathing a higher percentage of air that other people have exhaled. When airborne infectious diseases are spreading in a community, CO2 levels are a good proxy for one’s risk of infection. 

About NC Alliance for School Equity & Safety

As parents and residents of North Carolina, NC Alliance for School Equity & Safety is a grassroots group that came together to advocate for equity and safety for all students. NCASES supports fully-funding our public school system, with appreciation for educators and staff, following science during a pandemic, separating public health and politics and standing up for all students and their right to a quality, equal and safe education.

Data Repository: 

https://github.com/ncases2022/SchoolCO2Data 

Contact:

Kira Kroboth

Founder, NC Alliance for School Equity & Safety

ncases2022@gmail.com 

References

The U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC). Operational Guidance for K-12 Schools and Early Care and Education Programs to Support Safe In-Person Learning (Updated Aug, 2022)

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/schools-childcare/k-12-childcare-guidance.html

Curtius J, Granzin M, Schrod J. Testing mobile air purifiers in a school classroom: Reducing the

airborne transmission risk for SARS-CoV-2. Taylor & Francis Online. [Online] March 1, 2021.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02786826.2021.1877257 

Gettings J, Czarnik M, Morris E, et al. Mask Use and Ventilation Improvements to Reduce COVID-19 Incidence in Elementary Schools — Georgia, November 16–December 11, 2020. CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). [Online] May 28, 2021.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7021e1.htm?s_cid=mm7021e1_w 

Conway-Morris A, Sharrocks K, Bousfield R, et al. The removal of airborne SARS-CoV-2 and other microbial bioaerosols by air filtration on COVID-19 surge units. medRxiv. [Online] September 2, 2021. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.09.16.21263684v1