San Francisco Unified School District officials plan to spend $ 2.9 million on portable air purifiers to tackle poor air quality caused by wildfires, district officials said on Monday.

Most classrooms rely on open windows to prevent the spread of COVID-19 – a major concern as in-person learning resumed last week – but the unhealthy air makes that difficult.

Current district guidelines require all school sites to have an opening window, portable air purifier, or mechanical ventilation system to ensure air circulation.

District staff have been reviewing ventilation systems inside classrooms since the start of the year, as some elementary schools reopened for in-person learning in April and throughout the summer.

Currently, only 10% of the district’s 3,063 classrooms are equipped with district-supplied portable air purifiers, which meet district air filtration and power standards. “SFUSD has already distributed 775 portable air purifiers to ensure that classrooms without sufficient opening windows or mechanical air systems have adequate ventilation,” said Superintendent Dr. Vincent Matthews. “With growing concerns about managing indoor air quality in light of forest fires and COVID and given our initial testing, we are preparing to purchase even more portable air purifiers. ”

The purchase of additional air purifiers will first need to be approved by the San Francisco Board of Education. Once approved, district officials plan to distribute them as soon as possible, on an ongoing basis.

District officials said the district does not accept donations of portable air purifiers, but donations to help purchase more air purifiers and to support other district initiatives can be made. at https://www.sparksfpublicschools.org/donate.