Connecticut lawmakers are advocating for legislation that would help to improve air quality in public schools.
State Rep. Jennifer Leeper (D-Fairfield) is part of the Connecticut Working Group on School Indoor Air Quality. The group met at the State Capitol Wednesday to recognize National Healthy Schools Week. Leeper said it’s vital that schools have the best air quality.
“It impacts our children's ability to learn, it impacts our teacher's ability to educate and has led to folks being permanently disabled because of unhealthy air quality in our schools.”
The group expressed support for raised bill 6922, An Act Implementing the recommendations of the Department of Administrative Services regarding the school building project statutes. It's a bill before the general assembly that would, in part, reestablish air quality safety standards for local school districts.
Connecticut schools must complete an annual school building inspection and an HVAC inspection every five years.
Louis Rosado-Burch is with the Connecticut Education Association. He said some schools have yet to finish the assessment because they said they don’t have enough money. Rosado-Burch said more than a hundred schools in the state are overdue. He said the issue is of critical importance.
“So as issues like bird flu and RSV, other respiratory health concerns come back into focus, we have to ask where is the emphasis on indoor air quality? Have we learned nothing from the pandemic,” Rosado-Burch said.
Rosdao-Burch said several schools could not reopen post-pandemic because they did not meet the minimum health and air quality standards. Steve Schrag, the chair of the Connecticut Council on Occupational Safety and Health, said cuts in federal funding threaten the maintenance of air quality standards.
“Talk to any frontline workers, and they’ll tell you indoor air quality is a real problem. Whether it's a teacher, whether it's a building service worker or whether it's a healthcare worker,” Schrag said.
Leeper said the recommendation in the bill would make it easier to fund upgrades to school air ventilation systems. Each town or school district would be eligible to apply for grants on a rolling basis throughout the year. The grants will help schools comply with school safety infrastructure criteria and standards.
“Now we’ll be able to fold in our school's ability to bond for indoor air quality improvements, which we know can be prohibitively expensive and has been really the barrier for our districts implementing these improvements for many years,” Leeper said.
