Parental Efforts Cool Things Off : Elementary schools: With the district strapped for cash, some groups are trying to raise funds themselves for air conditioners in Valley classrooms.

Glenys Norwood doesn’t consider herself an activist. But the situation at her daughter’s elementary school seemed intolerable.

“Children can’t learn a damn thing when their classrooms are hitting 120 degrees--it’s a health hazard,” Norwood said. “It’s a state of emergency.”

So the Woodland Hills environmental consultant set to work. With a how-to manual in hand, she created her own nonprofit organization and named it after the elementary school her 8-year-old daughter attends. Then Norwood and the other Friends of Serrania solicited donations and mounted fund-raisers ranging from a slapdash rummage sale to a snazzy school carnival.

By school’s end last summer, $32,000 nested in the organization’s coffers--enough to pay for the installation of rooftop air-conditioning units in four Serrania Avenue School classrooms. More than 100 youngsters accustomed to baking in ovenlike classrooms felt the cool hand of relief after going back to school in August.

“It’s something that needed to be done,” said Norwood, 40.

Norwood and her corps of parents are trailblazers in a trend that has recently begun to sweep through the San Fernando Valley as thermometer readings rise and parents’ patience levels drop. With the Los Angeles Unified School District strapped for cash and smarting from deep budget cuts, a number of parent groups at Valley schools have taken matters into their own hands, paying for the air conditioning themselves.

They hold aluminum-can drives, auctions and walk-a-thons to raise the necessary funds. Parents at Topeka Drive School in Northridge are even planning a $100-a-plate benefit dinner featuring an hourlong show by singer Jeffrey Osborne, a parent at the school.

All have rallied around a cause that has galvanized an activist spirit some school officials say hasn’t been seen in years.

“I’m amazed at the amount of involvement,” said Gabe Cortina, district superintendent for elementary schools in the West Valley. “This is one of the few areas where there’s an incredible determination from the parents.”

“I’ve been here 11 years. This is the first time I’ve seen . . . parents raising money and doing something” on such a large scale, said Diana Dixon-Davis, vice president for community concerns with the 31st District Parent Teacher Student Assn., which covers the Valley.

At the heart of the movement is the harsh reality that schools now begin earlier in the summer but that the district has less funds for air conditioning. The only official funding for air conditioning funnels down from Sacramento, but priority belongs to “multitrack” year-round schools, leaving the majority of Valley campuses to sweat it out. According to district officials, of 171 schools in the Valley, only 49 are fully or mostly air-conditioned; the remainder have little or no cooling equipment. And most of the schools without air conditioning are in the West Valley, where temperatures tend to be highest. Inside classes with poor ventilation, conditions can be even hotter than outside.

“It was awful,” Joan Marks, Carpenter Avenue School principal, said of the classrooms on her Studio City campus that languished without air conditioning last year. “You’d see teachers and kids coming out of there with their faces red and sweat pouring off of them.”

Parents at Carpenter banded together at the beginning of the year to raise the cash for air conditioners in the eight rooms that still lacked cooling systems. Profits from a dinner-dance in February were earmarked for the project, and recruitment of potential donors and sponsors began in earnest.

But to the surprise of many parents, the district responded reluctantly to their request for official sanction and technical advice.

“We started an odyssey through the L. A. Unified bureaucratic structure,” said Lloyd Niven, 41, a contractor who has two children at Carpenter. “Originally we were told, ‘It can’t be done.’ But we kept pestering them. . . . Some people very high up in the school district finally blessed it and said, ‘OK, this is the kind of thing we want to see happen.”’

School officials said the district’s response--termed slow by some and resistant by others--was largely based on caution. Such projects often turn out to be of a scope that parents seldom expect and are surrounded by a tangled skein of technical regulations.

“The main thing people don’t realize is that air conditioning a school is like air conditioning a whole block,” Cortina said. “Most people think it’s just like a bedroom. But when you look at the volume, you see that one classroom is like six rooms.”

The technical realities often quash assumptions held by some parents that they need only to drive to the nearest appliance store and purchase a “swamp cooler” window unit for each classroom at the school. When this illusion vanishes, parents find that costs also quickly begin to outstrip expectations.

Because most Valley schools were built decades ago, many are not equipped for the added electrical burden of air conditioning and require extensive trenching for electrical lines and rewiring. Plans must be submitted by a licensed electrical contractor and approved by proper agencies.

Ultimately, the initial price tag for modifying a school’s power system can fall between $20,000 and $50,000, according to Julie Crum, the district’s deputy maintenance and operations director. Installing individual air-conditioning units costs an additional $4,000 to $6,000 per classroom, boosting the possible total for just a 10-room project to more than $100,000--an amount usually out of the reach of most parent groups.

“We wanted to see air conditioning in our schools for our own children and not the children 10 years from now. Little did we know before we looked into it that it would entail as much as it does,” said Jan Veis, parent of a student at Topeka, which is planning the Osborne benefit in April as its major fund-raiser.

At Carpenter, in the end, Niven and a passel of committed parents put out a “Herculean effort” to dig trenches, rewire electricity and install the air-conditioning units themselves, saving tens of thousands of dollars. Several people--including a man who drove from Victorville to offer his expertise--also donated time and labor to the project.

By the time school resumed in August, the air conditioning was up and running.

“The looks on the kids’ faces when they walked into cool rooms was just wonderful,” Marks said. “Not a day goes by that a parent or child doesn’t stop to say thank you.”

The success of Carpenter’s parents--who were recognized by school board member Roberta Weintraub on Friday--triggered a flurry of excited inquiries from other parents. The sudden explosion of interest has led the district to devise a draft of guidelines for groups to follow in their quest to bring air conditioning to their schools. The 31st District PTSA has also issued guidelines that address fund raising for air conditioning. If schools follow the guidelines, the district will pay maintenance costs and electrical bills.

To date, nearly 20 parent groups, mostly from the West Valley, have already contacted the district, officials said.

Reservations have already surfaced, however, concerning the shift toward parent groups raising money for air conditioning. Some officials question its fairness, saying parents in more affluent areas have the time and resources necessary to pull off such a feat, whereas those in poorer areas do not. The result would be unequal learning environments for children in different neighborhoods.

“We do have a little concern over the fact that some parents in some communities are able and more fortunate to raise the money for schools,” Cortina said. “So the district has to be concerned over the equitability of the availability of this kind of help. It’s a new phenomenon for us.”

But school board member Julie Korenstein, who represents the West Valley, said many schools in less-affluent areas are multitrack campuses that have already had air conditioning put in using state funds.

“The schools that are really out of the loop are single-track schools,” she said. “So, by allowing parents to raise funds, that’s really more equitable.”

Veis, the president of Topeka’s Parent and Faculty Organization, said the children’s needs are paramount.

“We all want the best for our kids. This is our community, our school,” she said. “Maybe we’re looking at more than we can do, but we’re going for it.”

Air Conditioning at Valley Schools

Air-conditioning situation at the 171 L.A. public schools in the Valley: 100% air-conditioned: 41 More than 50%: 8 Less than 50%: 89 No air conditioning: 33 Source: L.A. Unified School District