First day of new school year at Huckleberry Hill School, Brookfield, Conn. Tuesday, August 31, 2021.

In the coming weeks, Connecticut students will return to school amid a high level of statewide COVID-19 transmission. They will do so without mask requirements, without meaningful social distancing measures and, in many cases, without another tool experts consider essential in reducing spread indoors: proper ventilation.

An informal Hearst Connecticut Media survey of local school systems revealed little significant progress toward improving air quality, with some districts having taken small steps to bolster ventilation since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic but few having embarked on large-scale projects and many saying they lack funding for improvements they need, despite several recent infusions of federal cash.

Little appears to have changed since last year, when a review conducted by the state Department of Education found that only 40 percent of school facilities for which responses were submitted had central air conditioning for their entire building and only 53 percent had HVAC or high efficiency boilers no older than their expected useful life.

Some school system officials blame the lack of adequate ventilation on the state’s failure to fund upgrades — an issue lawmakers sought to address during this year’s legislative session, establishing a new fund for school air-quality projects. But other observers, including at least one teachers group, say school districts simply haven’t given the issue the attention it deserves.

“It was absolutely shocking to me how few districts chose to actually make capital improvements when, in fact, the federal government had [encouraged it],” said Kate Dias, a Manchester High math teacher and president of the Connecticut Education Association. “That’s a profoundly disappointing commentary.”

Last summer the CEA circulated a survey asking teachers and other school staff about safety protocols for the coming year. Though 85 percent of respondents called improved ventilation “very important,” only 27 percent said they felt their school’s ventilation system provided enough protection from COVID-19 to make them feel safe.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists ventilation as a key component of maintaining healthy environments and an “important COVID-19 prevention strategy for schools and childcare programs.” In addition to simple strategies such as opening windows and holding activities outdoors, the agency recommends up-to-date HVAC systems and air filtration methods such as high-efficiency particulate filters.

Paula Schenck, who previously led UConn’s Center for Indoor Environments and Health and now advises clinicians on environmental contributors to illness, said ventilation belongs alongside testing, screening for symptoms, masking, social distancing and disinfection on the list of interventions that can reduce COVID risk in schools.

“It all can be managed, and ventilation is a very important, super important piece,” Schenck said.

More than two and a half years into the COVID-19 pandemic, ventilation still varies widely in Connecticut from district to district and school to school, with some buildings using central systems and others, as Schenck puts in, “still on open windows and exhaust fans.”

That means many students statewide continue to sit in classrooms that are frigid in January or sweltering in June and that those students — as well as their teachers — are more likely to catch COVID-19 and other communicable diseases than they would be in rooms with better air circulation.

At a Danbury Board of Education meeting this past May, a longtime teacher at the local high school, Emily Pardalis, testified that the windows in her classroom were welded shut and that she didn’t trust the building’s HVAC system to keep her safe amid a surge of COVID-19 cases. When she had attempted to fix the situation, she said, she found herself “meeting brick walls.”

“This is the cornerstone of my alarm, the lack of a healthy environment due to poor air quality,” she said. “My goal tonight is simply to let you know what my life has been like seeking a simple goal of fresh air and a healthy working environment.”

Pardalis said the district had supplied classrooms with air purifiers but that she wasn’t convinced they were sufficient to keep her and her students safe. (At a meeting the following month, a school district official said air circulation issues in the wing where Pardalis works had since been addressed. A representative from Danbury Public Schools did respond to questions about air quality in the district more generally.)

Though COVID-19 transmission is not currently as widespread in Connecticut as it was last winter, the state continues to report thousands of new cases a week — not counting those recorded through at-home tests — and still has more than 350 people hospitalized with the disease. Meanwhile, experts anticipate a further surge in illness this fall and winter, as temperatures drop and residents increasingly gather indoors.

Last year, that meant tens of thousands of cases among Connecticut students between December and February and several thousand more among staff, according to data collected by Connecticut’s Department of Public Health, even with a statewide school mask mandate still in place. With masking requirements and most other pandemic-control measures having since been lifted, ventilation now stands as one of the last lines of defense in Connecticut schools.

Dias said she has heard regularly from teachers and students whose classrooms are too hot or too cold, or lack the type of air circulation that would reduce their likelihood of catching COVID-19.

Citing last year’s State Department of Education review, as well as the teacher survey, Dias and CEA have pushed Connecticut’s legislature to establish statewide air quality requirements, which would force local districts to act.

“There have to be actual standards and expectations because that’s what will move the needle,” she said. “Absent those, they can continue to look at us and say, ‘Well, we’re doing the best we can.’”

Since it became clear that air circulation would be key to reducing COVID-19 risk in schools, at least some Connecticut districts have taken steps to improve in that area, sometimes using federal relief funds to do so.

Norwalk officials, for example, say they have upgraded filters on all air delivery systems across the school system, while also supplying desktop air filters for classrooms, offices and other small group spaces.

“When we came back to school in person, it provided people with quite a sense of security that we were going above and beyond what the CDC was recommending,” said Sandra Faioes, the city’s assistant superintendent of business and operations. “It’s not only the benefit of filtration, but it [also] shows we’re committed to providing them a safe work environment and maintaining our mitigating strategies.”

Other districts have tried similar measures. In Bloomfield, the school system hired a contractor to test HVAC systems townwide and began replacing air filters more frequently. In Bethel, officials have used federal funds to clean ducts in local schools and replace air conditioning units at Bethel Middle School. A spokesperson for the Greenwich school system said the town plans to install needlepoint bipolar ionization devices, a controversial technology that purportedly increases the likelihood that virus particles are trapped in filters.

New Fairfield superintendent Kenneth Craw said the district has upgraded air quality as part of broader renovations to the elementary school in town and replaced an outdated energy management system in its middle school.

In Bridgeport, the local school district deployed air purifiers in classrooms and common areas and hired an engineering firm to conduct an assessment as part of a long-term road map.

“It will take time to get a firm handle on the districts HVAC due to its complexity and the district’s challenges with adequate funding over the years,” superintendent Michael Testani said in an email. “With that said, we have a solid plan to utilize the infusion of new [federal] funding, the HVAC assessment and [a] preventative maintenance program to truly take hold of our schools’ environment.”

At the time of last year’s state Department of Education survey, school districts statewide had committed at least $362 million for preventive maintenance and equipment replacement in fiscal year 2021 and between $109 million and $171 million more to be spent between fiscal years 2022 and 2025.

As for whether these steps enough to keep students safe from COVID-19 and other viruses that linger in the air, Schenck said she’d always rather schools take small steps to improve air quality than do nothing at all. For example, while she might prefer HVAC systems remain on 24 hours a day during humid weather to ensure air is constantly circulating, she’s happy if a school agrees to turn on its system a few hours early to flush out stale air before students arrive.

“I talk about reducing the risk,” Schenck said. “You ask about making things safe, I talk about reducing the risk.”

Still, school system officials acknowledge there’s room to do significantly more to improve ventilation in their buildings. As Dias sees it, most upgrades in the past two years have been too modest and too scarce, as districts have opted for quick fixes instead of more thorough — and expensive — overhauls.

“They’ve installed air purifiers as short-term solutions, but putting a portable air purifier in a classroom isn’t a long-term fix,” she said.

Many school districts offer the same explanation for failing to significantly upgrade their ventilation since the start of the pandemic: lack of funding.

Bethel superintendent Christine Carver said the district doesn’t have the money to upgrade air conditioning systems in the local high school the way it did in its middle school. A Middletown Public Schools spokesperson said the district would need additional funds to install any “new technologies or efficiencies.” In Ridgefield, superintendent Susie Da Silva said the district has upgraded its air filtration systems and set exhaust ventilation systems to run 24 hours a day but can’t afford to replace HVAC infrastructure that has been in place more than two decades.

“It turns out that, for instance, to install air conditioning in our older school buildings is not an easy or inexpensive undertaking,” said Patrice McCarthy, executive director of the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education.

When Congress passed the American Rescue Plan Act in early 2021, allocating $870 million in municipal aid to Connecticut cities and towns as part of a $1.9 trillion federal package, Coventry town manager John Elsesser cited school ventilation as a possible use for the town’s $3.6 million allotment.

But as it turns out, Elsesser says now, the math wasn’t so simple. Some of those ARPA funds went to COVID-related expenses and some have been allotted toward other projects in town. Ultimately, there wasn’t nearly enough for the type of large-scale ventilation improvement the local schools needed.

If Coventry had wanted to fix its ventilation problems by building an entirely new school, the town could have applied for a state grant to cover much of the cost. But at the time, the state did not offer a similar program for smaller projects like HVAC improvements.

“If you wanted to get modern school facilities, it was easier to throw you school out and build a new one,” Elsesser said.

The issue was a source of deep frustration for Joe DeLong, executive director of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, who lobbied during the past year’s legislative session for new funds to help schools improve their air quality, arguing that towns couldn’t pay for needed upgrades on their own. He eventually got his way when lawmakers approved a $75 million fund to help school districts improve their air quality.

“In many of these particularly smaller towns, the ARPA funds weren’t nearly enough to tackle these issues alone,” DeLong said.

Local officials say the new funds will help — but not until the 2023 fiscal year and likely not as widely as is necessary. Elsesser says Coventry plans to apply for a state grant under the new program with the hope of installing unit ventilators in the local high school but can’t count on receiving one.

“It’s going to really competitive. The money will run out fast,” Elsesser said. “On the other hand, we’ll prove that there’s need.”

Though she’s encouraged by the new state fund for air quality projects, Dias isn’t sold that money alone will lead to improved ventilation in schools. She notes that Connecticut towns received hundreds of millions of dollars not only through ARPA but also through the 2020 CARES Act and failed to turn those funds into widespread action.

To Dias, the fact relatively few Connecticut school districts embarked on major ventilation upgrades even amid an acute health crisis reinforced the need for statewide air quality requirements.

“Clearly money is not the problem because when given a substantial amount of money, districts still didn’t address this issue,” she said. “So I firmly believe that unless there are standards you’re never going to change this issue.”

McCarthy, from the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education, defended how towns and school districts spent their federal funds, arguing that air quality was just one of many pressing needs.

“Any funds a community receives can only be spent once, and given the needs we could probably spend them 10 times over,” McCarthy said. “A lot of those funds have been used for supports for students, to accelerate their learning, to address issues of learning loss that occurred during the pandemic.”

McCarthy also pushed back against Dias’ proposal for statewide air quality standards, saying schools have to “balance what is feasible against what might be ideal.”

A spokesperson for the State Department of Education said in an email that “school safety, including proper ventilation, remains a priority for the administration” and pointed toward the federal funds towns have received as well as the new state program established in the recent legislative session.

As the new school year starts, it’s too late for districts to significantly upgrade their ventilation systems in time to reduce risk for students and teachers this fall. But with the state fund launching next year and some towns still looking for ways to spend the federal money they have received, school systems will have future chances to make improvements — if they deem ventilation a worthwhile priority.

“Can we manage [COVID] in our schools? I believe we can,” Schenck said. “But we need to manage it correctly.”

Emily Morgan, Kendra Baker, Julia Perkins, Brian Lockhart, Sandra Fox, Austin Mirmina, Annelise Hanshaw and Emily DiSalvo contributed to this report.