In record-breaking March heat recently, fans were the soundtrack of a newly renovated Millikan High School building — teachers’ makeshift solution to a nonfunctional heating and cooling system.
When about two dozen Millikan teachers moved into the newly upgraded English Language Arts building in January — part of a $79 million project including construction across three buildings — “We believed we’d come back to air conditioning,” one teacher told the Long Beach Post. Instead, classrooms were equipped with space heaters, which the teacher took as “evidence that we don’t actually have air conditioning,” she said. “That became the truth,” she added.
For years, urgency has been mounting for the district to install air conditioning in its schools. A decade ago, Long Beach voters approved a bond measure dedicating $1.5 billion to school repair and safety, including updating heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems. In 2022, after a heat wave and an increasing number of poor air quality days, LBUSD expedited the timeline for HVAC projects and announced nearly all schools would have air conditioning by the end of 2027. Millikan, Poly and Sato are the only high schools still awaiting new HVAC systems, according to the district’s site tracking bond measures. Some say it still isn’t happening fast enough.
Four Millikan teachers assigned to the English Language Arts building spoke with the Long Beach Post and requested they not be named over fears of retaliation. They voiced frustration that they were placed “back in these classrooms obviously way too early,” one said, citing the lack of adequate cooling in particular.
Teachers told the Post that they measured classroom temperatures in the 90s earlier in March, which they said affects student behavior. “Kids want to sleep because they’re tired, they’re hot,” one teacher said. “They’re checked out, heads down.”
Classrooms recently received water coolers to mitigate the heat, but it wasn’t enough to keep students cool, said teachers, many of whom have purchased their own fans. One teacher said she bought eight; at a recent open house, when outdoor temperatures reached a high of 91 degrees, she had five running at once. Also at the open house, parents of Millikan students remarked on the temperature and questioned the point of all the construction if the classrooms were still blistering.
A spokesperson for the district said the HVAC system has been fully installed and will be up and running once Southern California Edison completes the final step of providing permanent power to the campus, work that is scheduled to be completed over the district’s spring break in April. The building “is safe for instruction,” the LBUSD spokesperson said.
Teachers said they’re concerned that even once the HVAC is working the building will not be well insulated because the old single-pane windows were not replaced.
They remain frustrated about other aspects of the renovation, too. The new building currently has no elevator. The LBUSD spokesperson said the first floor is compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act and that the elevator installation was intentionally sequenced later to allow continued access for ongoing work. One teacher said students on crutches or with accessibility needs who have classes on the upper floor must go to the library to take their classes. “The school has been, and will continue accommodating ADA needs,” an LBUSD spokesperson said.
A district spokesperson said this and other modernization projects focus on fire and life safety, accessibility and structural integrity. Other improvements are considered “nice-to-have” items and are completed based on available funding and project scope, she said. As a result, some items like lockers and older equipment remain in place if they do not pose safety or compliance issues.
Some teachers praised the new technology upgrades, including mounted projectors and speakers built into the ceiling. “This is the first time in 20 years I haven’t had extension cords running in every direction,” one teacher said.
Yet teachers also surfaced complaints about cosmetic issues and unfinished projects: mismatched tiles, holes in the walls and ceilings, vestigial heaters filled with snack wrappers and trash, closet doors that won’t latch and a film of construction dust coating surfaces throughout the building.
Many of these complaints are familiar, said a teacher at Lakewood High School, Millikan’s “architectural twin,” which was renovated years ago. While Lakewood’s HVAC was largely operational when teachers moved back into their classrooms, “it took a while for them to work out the bugs,” the teacher said. Some facilities, like the aquatic center and football field, are beautiful, he said. But classrooms didn’t get the facelift he might have hoped for: it didn’t “even look like we had gotten a renovation,” he said.