Some Wake schools have high CO2 levels. A parent group says you should be worried.

High carbon dioxide readings in several Wake County schools are causing a parent group to question the quality of the air that students are breathing.

N.C. Alliance for School Equity & Safety released findings Tuesday showing that all five district schools and a charter school they tested had higher than recommended carbon dioxide levels. High CO2 readings can point to ventilation problems that negatively impact the ability of students to learn.

“The district needs to do its own readings, acknowledge something is wrong and fix things,” Kira Kroboth, the group’s founder and a Wake County parent, said in an interview Tuesday.

Kroboth has shared some of her findings with the Wake County school system. She wants the district to hire a third party to conduct an air quality audit of every school.

The district is reviewing the group’s concerns and is investigating options to assess air quality, according to Lisa Luten, a Wake County schools spokeswoman. She said Wake is also looking at what other similar size districts are doing on the issue.

Impact of high CO2 levels

Concerns about air quality rose during the pandemic. as schools sought ways to improve indoor ventilation as a way to reduce the risk of spreading COVID-19.

One of the areas of concern is the amount of carbon dioxide in an enclosed space such as a classroom. Excessive CO2 levels can cause health issues such as headaches, unconsciousness and loss of mental acuity.

“CO2 isn’t the villain,” Michael Bailey, founder of the group Indoor Air Care Advocates, said in an interview Tuesday. “But it means you’re rebreathing other people’s air so whatever they’re sick with, you have that exposure as well.”

Bailey has been working with Kroboth and parents across the nation on how to bring carbon dioxide sensors to schools to conduct “guerrilla CO2 monitoring.”

Kroboth’s group took thousands of readings over several weeks at six schools. Kroboth said all six schools had readings above the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommended limit of 800 parts per million of carbon dioxide.

Nearly all the schools went over 1,200 parts per million. A classroom trailer at one elementary school in western Wake reached more than 3,000 parts per million of CO2.

“Some of the data we are gathering shows CO2 levels high enough to impact cognitive functioning of our students and educators,” Kroboth said. “Adequate ventilation should be a priority for our schools, especially as we focus on learning loss and aim to keep our kids in the building safely learning.”

Kroboth doesn’t name the district schools in her data. She plans to add data from at least three more schools, with more coming as parents borrow CO2 sensors from the group.

Is Wake doing enough?

During the pandemic, Wake took steps such as:

▪ Upgrading MERV-13 filters installed in HVAC systems districtwide. These filters work at the building rather than the classroom level.

▪ Running HVAC systems for extended periods before and after the school day to increase air flow.

▪ Adjusting outdoor air louvers and dampers and cleaning as needed based upon regular inspections and filter changes.

▪ Regularly inspecting exhaust systems and maintaining for proper operation.

Some Wake parents spent hundreds and thousands of dollars out of their own pockets to buy air purifiers for their children’s classrooms because the school district would not do so.

The air quality solutions will likely vary by school and by classroom, Kroboth said. But one step she said Wake could take is to install HEPA (high-efficiency particulate absorbing) filtration units in classrooms in the meantime.

“I want them to verify the investments they made in the HVAC system so that we know it was an investment that was well spent and our kids are sitting in good quality air,” Kroboth said.