Finally! After years of heat and stench,
Maili Elementary gets cool airStaffers hail the arrival of air
conditioning at the Leeward schoolBy Mary Vorsino
mvorsino@starbulletin.comThat's what teachers at Maili Elementary School are saying about their newly installed air-conditioning system.
"It was despicable conditions," said Stacey Omori, a 15-year veteran of Maili. "Just to finally see something come out of this ... (the teachers) are so happy."
The Leeward Oahu school, nestled among chicken and pig farms and battered by hot winds, has long been plagued by dust, heat, large flies and stench. When it opens its doors to more than 800 students tomorrow, it will have -- for the first time in the school's history -- cool air.
School principal Linda Victor said students and teachers will now be able to breathe easier -- literally and figuratively.
"We have feathers. Chicken feathers (from neighboring chicken farms)," she said. "We've always had a lot of problems with the dust. We've always had problems with the environment.
Now "the teachers are very happy and everybody's looking forward" to the first day of classes, she said.
The air conditioning comes more than two years after Maili teachers and parents held a rally at the Capitol to lobby for funding and state lawmakers responded with a $3 million appropriation.
The installation follows nearly eight months of construction, which displaced some students.
Diane Ott, who has been teaching at Maili for 30 years, said her fourth-grade class got a small taste of air conditioning last year when it was moved to the library for about two weeks during the construction. She noticed a difference in her students immediately.
"During September or October, it gets so hot," Ott said. "The kids, they just melt. They couldn't concentrate in the afternoons because it's so warm."
In the cooled room, they were more attentive. "You want learning to occur the whole day, to feel good the whole day," Ott said, and that was impossible in a sweltering classroom covered with dust and permeated with the stench of nearby animal farms. During her time at the school, Ott has learned not to breathe through her nose, especially after a rain. The water soaks previously dried manure from nearby farms, she said.
Sen. Colleen Hanabusa (D, Maili-Waianae) said the air conditioning will mean increased student productivity and learning.
"They should be able to concentrate on their schoolwork. ... They shouldn't have to be hot. They should be there to learn," she said.
Omori, who has pushed for air conditioning for seven years, agreed. The curriculum coordinator said she fainted from the heat during her first year at the school and later developed asthma from the constant dusty air.
"I'm sure it's going to make a difference," she said. "My major complaint was that our environment was not conducive to kids."
When teachers started recording temperatures in their classrooms two years ago to show hard data to the Legislature, they were shocked by the results, she said. Some rooms topped 95 degrees in the summer, even with all the doors and windows open.
Students may be surprised when they walk into cool classrooms tomorrow, Omori said.
"I don't think they know. We've been talking about this air-conditioning problem for years," she said, so school officials decided not to get the kids' hopes up.
State Department of Education