Denver's Park Hill Elementary School students help solve hot classrooms problem

At Denver's Park Hill Elementary School, a small group of fourth graders came up with a big idea to help cool down their school.

"We decided that we wanted to include ceiling fans, because it would make us feel cooler," explained Chloe Prom, a member of the school's Sustainability Club.

Park Hill Elementary is expected to have air conditioning units installed over the summer as part of a 2024 bond passed by voters. But installing fans was a quicker solution with sustainable results.

"It was really, really hot on the third floor, and it was really hard for students to learn," said Prom. "It was like 80 degrees average in the summer, and so that was really unpleasant, and it made it really hard to focus."

Thanks to the hard work of the Sustainability Club, the school was able to get a grant from the city climate protection fund worth nearly $20,000 to install fans in 10 of the school's hottest classrooms over spring break.

"The ceiling fans, the ones that we got, only use about 35 watts of energy turned up to the highest level, which is only about one light bulb of energy to make the entire classroom cooler," said Prom.

"As soon as the students reached out, saying, we want to do this, we were all hands on deck to figure out what would that look like to make happen," said Kelly Moses, a program manager for DPS's sustainability efforts and says even after the school gets AC, they won't have to turn it up as high thanks to the fans, making it a long-term, energy-efficient solution.

"The students were surveying before, they're going to survey after for the folks in those classrooms to say, like, did it work? Did it do well?" said Moses.

For now, the answer is yes.

"Our hard work had a big impact on the school and other kids' learning," said Tegan Williamson, another member of the school's Sustainability Club.