These 10 Philly schools are getting AC thanks to Jalen Hurts. But 63 schools citywide are still sweltering.

Awilda Balbuena loves her job as principal of Gloria Casarez Elementary in Kensington: the staff, the families, the 465 students in kindergarten through fifth grade.

But after 15 years inside the building, Balbuena knows: August, September, and June can be tough months inside the school.

For the last 125 years, students have attended Casarez, formerly known as Sheridan Elementary, suffering sweltering temperatures with no air-conditioning. But when students return Aug. 26, they’ll enter cooled classrooms, thanks to Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts, who pledged $200,000 this spring for the cooling projects at Casarez and nine other schools — Clara Barton, Castor Gardens Middle School, D. Newlin Fell, Thomas Finletter, Fitler Academics Plus, Benjamin Franklin/Science Leadership Academy, Edward Gideon, A.S. Jenks, and Theodore Roosevelt.

Seven of the 10 schools had 199 air conditioners installed this summer; the projects at Castor Gardens and Roosevelt are expected to be completed by September. One project is still in the planning stages.

Systemwide, the Philadelphia School District still has 63 schools that lack adequate air-conditioning. Officials have said that all city public schools won’t be air-conditioned until 2027.

It’s not as simple as buying cooling units; the average Philadelphia school is 70-plus years old and does not have the electrical service to support enough window units to appropriately cool schools.

That leads to inequities in learning; when temperatures are above 90, the district works with principals at schools without air-conditioning to determine whether classes should be dismissed early, or held at all. Kids in schools with adequate air-conditioning continue learning uninterrupted.

But really, Balbuena said, even on days when it wasn’t quite hot enough to dismiss early or cancel school, students’ learning was affected. When she walked into the brick building on East Ontario for the first time after the air-conditioning units were installed, the principal said, she was thrilled.

“There won’t be that obstacle of ‘Let’s take breaks, let’s get those water breaks, let’s put our heads down to cool off,’” Balbuena said. “There will be a lot more learning going on.”

Classrooms, especially those on upper floors, are known to get the hottest in late spring, at the end of the school year, and in summer, at the beginning. Only the main office, teachers’ lounge, and technology room had portable air conditioners before this summer; when students with asthma struggled to breathe, nurses had to relocate them to the main office to receive treatments because the nurse’s office had no air-conditioning.

Now, Balbuena believes, attendance will improve in warm months because she knows parents often kept their children home on sweltering days.

Balbuena even used the new air-conditioning units to give her a selling point in a national teacher shortage.

“It’s been really hard to hire teachers to come work here when I don’t have that AC as an option for them,” Balbuena said. “This year, that was part of our hiring strategy: We have AC this year.”

And she’s looking forward to Casarez being a summer school site next year; the school has never been able to offer those classes because of the lack of climate control, and many Casarez families are reluctant to send their children to summer enrichment classes at other schools.

“They have said to me every year, ‘If you have summer school, they will be here.’ That will also contribute to safety — I will know where those children are. And it’s going to help with reducing the summer slide that is also common,” Balbuena said.

» READ MORE: These Kensington 4th graders wanted a new schoolyard. Here’s how they made it happen.

That Casarez was on the list of Hurts’ schools is no small point of pride for Balbuena. In the 2021-22 school year, the “Changemakers,” a group of Casarez students organized to fight for things they believed needed to be fixed at their school and their city, began writing letters and speaking at public meetings. The students — fourth graders at the time — spoke plaintively about how their schoolyard was dangerous and full of broken concrete.

The kids were polite, and they were persistent. Eventually, they got the ear of the school board and their play yard was repaired. They also helped pull levers to get their school’s name changed to honor a trailblazing LGBTQ and Latina icon from the neighborhood.

But the air-conditioning took a little longer.

Balbuena can’t wait to tell the original Changemakers, now in middle school.

“They helped make this change,” the principal said.

Though Hurts paid for the air-conditioning units themselves, the larger tab was picked up by the district — it costs between $1 million and $1.5 million per school to upgrade electrical service enough to run air-conditioning units for every learning space, said Paul Bonewicz, the district’s executive director of facilities management services.

At Casarez, there are 32 classrooms, each of which has gotten air-conditioning. But the district was unable to cool the Casarez gym and lunchroom because those spaces are too large for window units.

“Electrical capacity is a major concern,” said Bonewicz.

Retrofitting old buildings for air-conditioning is a major undertaking. District electricians run conduit and piping through two panels, and bring circuits into each room. Ironworkers install safety brackets, then window units are mounted in such a way that the school’s windows — which have safety screens — can still be opened partway. The air-conditioning units are secured so they can’t be pushed out.

Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr., school board members, and students from the Academy at Palumbo in South Philadelphia and Kearny Elementary in Northern Liberties also gathered at Citizens Bank Park on Wednesday to hold a pep rally for the 2024-25 school year.

Sarah-Ashley Andrews, a school board member and therapist, said it was important to start the school year on a high note and encouraged the district’s 113,000 students to look for support among staff, peers, and families.

“Each school year,” Andrews said, “brings a fresh start.”