Clearing the Air

loT Tech is Transforming Air Quality in Denver Public Schools and Nationwide

- Aron Vaughan

COVID-19 impacted almost every aspect of society. Some of those changes led, albeit often unintentionally, to positive outcomes. As a result of COVID-related concerns in public schools, new innovations have emerged to tackle the problem of air quality in the thousands of buildings across the U.S. that house our children during the schoolyear.

COVID-19 is a looming threat in poorly ventilated areas, but the concern also “opened the airwaves” to a reignited conversation about other potentially dangerous particulates in the air that contribute to asthma and reduced oxygen in school halls and classrooms.

Increased Funding

In Nov. 2022, the Biden Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency pledged $53.4 million for improved air quality monitoring projects in 2023.

In his air quality summit in Oct. 2022, President Biden pointed to the Colorado Public School System as a great example of a system acting to mitigate the risk of ever-increasing pollution and airborne viruses, like COVID-19, the flu, and RSV.

Increased funding for air quality monitoring in 2023 points to growing concern over the air quality crisis and what students and those who spend time indoors are breathing in.

The story of Denver Public Schools mirrors that of other large urban school districts. There is a distribution of buildings in terms of age and indoor environmental quality. Denver is the biggest city in the mountain west. Along with that comes a school district with 200 buildings, 5,000 classrooms.