Key findings
Between 2021 and 2024, licensed professionals inspected 71,144 HVAC units at K-12 public schools across California. Here’s what the data show:
There are existing funds to help address deficient school HVAC systems. An estimated $194 million in CalSHAPE money remains unspent. But the state froze new applications in 2024 and never reopened them. Without legislative action, that money will revert to investor-owned utility companies on December 1, 2026, and the program will end in December 2026. This money is already set aside for school HVAC upgrades — no new funding from ratepayers or the General Fund is required.
CalSHAPE: The program built to fix school HVAC
Extreme heat, wildfire smoke, and other hazards driven by climate change threaten student and staff safety, learning, attendance, children’s health, educational equity, and school budgets. Modern electric HVAC systems — such as heat pumps — are the first line of defense, cooling classrooms and improving indoor air quality. HVAC upgrades also reduce the risk of airborne diseases like COVID-19 and measles, reduce exposure to carcinogens, and let students and staff breathe clean air during wildfire smoke events. Electric HVAC systems cut climate pollution, make schools more energy-efficient, and save money that can be reinvested into classrooms.
The California Schools Healthy Air, Plumbing, and Efficiency Program (CalSHAPE) is the only California grant program dedicated specifically to school HVAC. The program also funded plumbing upgrades to improve water quality, but demand for those was smaller and they are not the focus of this report.
Created by AB 841 in 2020, CalSHAPE’s HVAC program was designed to proceed in two phases:
- Phase 1 (Assessment & Maintenance) paid for professional HVAC assessments and minor repairs to systems
- Phase 2 (Upgrade & Repair) paid to fix and replace the deficiencies that the assessments found
The program was in high demand — 626 local education agencies (LEAs) received Phase 1 assessment awards covering 4,688 school sites. CalSHAPE especially helped high-need schools: 45 percent of the program’s budget went to schools in underserved communities, well above the 25 percent required by statute. Then, in July 2024, applications were abruptly frozen and never reopened. Only 172 schools, at 39 LEAs, received Phase 2 upgrade funding. Now, thousands of California schools have had a licensed professional inspect and document HVAC deficiencies, but if CalSHAPE is allowed to expire, many will have no path to fixing the identified problems.
There is $194 million left in an account that was intended for schools. CalSHAPE was originally funded from the efficiency budgets of California’s investor-owned utilities from 2021 to 2023, with a small amount of additional funding from cap-and-trade revenues. Releasing these remaining funds to improve school HVAC would not deplete the General Fund or raise bills for ratepayers.
What we did
We analyzed unit-level HVAC assessment data from the California Energy Commission that covers 1,618 school sites across 252 LEAs — roughly one-third of all participating schools. This reflects the data available at the time of writing, since assessment reports are still being completed and verified. As more data becomes available, we plan to extend the analysis to all participating schools and LEAs.
There are 71,144 individual HVAC unit records. Every unit was inspected by a professional assessor, who recorded condition details: efficiency ratings, filtration capability, heating fuel, and more. Assessments were conducted between 2021 and 2024 and reflect conditions at that time. Participating districts opted into CalSHAPE, and assessment reports were completed and released on a rolling basis, so the schools in our sample are not a random draw from California’s roughly 10,000 public schools. Our findings describe conditions at the 1,618 assessed schools. Assessments were completed using two different formats — referred to in this report as the “earlier” protocol and “current” protocol. Data fields differed for each protocol, so some findings reflect a subset of our sample. These are the best available data on school HVAC conditions in California, but should not be read as a formal statewide estimate.
Data sources
(1) CalSHAPE assessment records for 1,618 school sites, obtained from the California Energy Commission (data pulled June 2026), covering 71,144 HVAC units across 252 school districts — roughly a third of the 4,688 schools that completed Phase 1 assessments. (2) The CEC CalSHAPE Grant Awarded List, for program-wide participation: LEA counts, Phase 1 and Phase 2 dollars and school counts. (3) The CEC’s school characteristics file (2019–20 snapshot) for enrollment, free/reduced-price meal shares, low-income community designation, and CalEnviroScreen flags.
Two assessment formats
The records are in two formats. Version 2 (the current protocol) records structured equipment and deficiency flags per unit: heating type (no heat / gas / heat pump / electric resistance), cooling type, and MERV-13 capability, among others. Version 1 (earlier assessments) records unit-level nameplate data — manufacturer, model, capacity — without structured flags. The Version 1 export contained 2,705 exact duplicate rows (identical across all 265 columns, affecting 206 schools), which we removed before analysis; all counts in this report reflect the deduplicated data. We aggregated both formats to the school level; 41,011 of 71,144 units were assessed under Version 2.
Classification rules
Replacement verdicts were normalized to Replace / Repair / No action from each format’s recommendation field. Heating fuel: for V2 units, taken from the heating flags, prioritized gas > heat pump > electric resistance > no-heat when multiple flags appear (multi-flag units are mostly heat pumps with resistance backup); for V1 units, classified from manufacturer and model-prefix nameplate rules, validated at 93 percent agreement against V2 flags on overlapping equipment types. 60,742 units (85 percent) could be classified; the rest are reported as unclassified and excluded from fuel-share denominators. SEER treated as readable when a plausible value between 5 and 30 was recorded — 18,556 units (26 percent); efficiency findings describe that subset. MERV-13 filtration is reported as an outcome: the share of units whose installed (“as-left”) filter rating was still below MERV-13 when the assessor finished the visit — 33,554 of the 68,250 units with a readable filter rating (49 percent). For V1 units this uses the MERV Installed Rating field (16,243 of 30,133 below 13, 54 percent); for V2 units, the as-left MERV field in the filter-data section (17,311 of 38,117 with valid entries, 45 percent; 2,894 units lacked a readable value and are excluded from the denominator). Because Phase 1 protocol was to install the highest-rated filter each unit could support, the as-left rating primarily reflects equipment capability: in V2, 10,539 units (26 percent) carry the explicit “fan/motor system could not be adjusted to use MERV-13 filtration” deficiency flag, and in V1 the tested and installed ratings agree at the MERV-13 threshold for 95 percent of units. Outside air: reported as a combined figure across both formats — 41,721 of the 65,991 units with outside-air data (63 percent) could not deliver required outside air under their format’s check. For V2 units, 23,349 of 41,011 (57 percent) had at least one structured reason selected for why the system could not be adjusted to meet the outside-air requirement; 13,335 (33 percent) cited broken or non-responsive hardware (no intake, broken damper/actuator/controller, controller not communicating, or blocked intake). In V1, 18,372 of the 24,980 units with a recorded outside-air test (74 percent) failed the within-10-percent-of-design check. The two formats measure the shortfall differently (structured cannot-be-adjusted reasons vs. a failed delivery test), so the combined share should be read as an approximation. Economizers and controls (V2): economizer present in 16,169 units (39 percent), of which 8,294 (51 percent) passed all functional testing; demand-controlled ventilation in use on 3,094 units (8 percent); 20,121 units (49 percent) controlled by a local thermostat. On-the-spot fixes (V2): 15,442 units (38 percent) had a filter upgrade (as-left rating above as-found) or at least one documented minor repair or adjustment; 4,067 had a thermostat or building-automation system reprogrammed or replaced.
Geography and matching
Schools were geocoded and assigned to Assembly and Senate districts by point-in-polygon against the post-2021 district maps; legislator names reflect 2026 membership. School-level records were rolled up to district and LEA levels by summing counts and computing shares from summed numerators and denominators (never by averaging percentages). Assessment aggregates were matched to the award list by normalized district name: 251 of the 495 award LEAs matched, covering 1,617 of 1,618 assessed schools. The raw assessment files contain 308 distinct LEA codes because charter schools carry their own codes within a district’s CDS prefix; we report 252 distinct districts by CDS prefix.
Limitations
Assessments reflect conditions at the time of assessment (2021–2024). The sample is large but not a random sample of assessed schools, so statewide shares describe the sample, not a formal estimate for all 4,688 schools. Seven schools opened or renamed after the 2019–20 CEC snapshot lack school characteristics; equity shares use the 1,611 matched schools. The underserved-community flag is built from the CEC’s own SEES webmap eligibility data (low-income community, CalEnviroScreen top-25 percent, ≥75 percent free/reduced-price meal eligibility, tribal lands); the statute’s remaining criterion, the disadvantaged-community income test, is not a separate field in the CEC’s data and is captured by its low-income designation in practice.
What we found
The majority of school HVAC systems need replacing
For each individual HVAC unit, a professional assessor made one of three recommendations — that the unit be replaced, repaired, or that no action was needed. Nearly 54 percent of the 71,144 units in our sample were recommended for full replacement. Another 18 percent needed to be repaired. 73 percent of units had at least one documented deficiency — things like broken economizers, failed sensors, and units at the end of their life. The vast majority of school HVAC systems need attention beyond routine servicing.
Old, inefficient HVAC equipment is costing schools money
The Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ratio (SEER) measures how much cooling a unit delivers per unit of electricity. Federal standards have required new equipment to exceed SEER 13 since 2006. Among units where assessors could verify the efficiency rating, 73 percent were at or below the twenty-year-old SEER 13 mark. A SEER 14 unit provides the same amount of cooling for 29 percent less electricity than a SEER 10 unit — the most common rating in our sample. Put another way, replacing a SEER 10 unit with a SEER 14 unit cuts cooling electricity use by nearly a third. Economizers — a key efficiency technology that pulls in outside air for free cooling — are missing from 61 percent of units assessed under the current protocol. Of the units that have one, only 51 percent passed functional testing.
Nearly half of units assessed under the current protocol are run by a standalone wall thermostat with no connection to a building management system, and only 8 percent use demand-controlled ventilation. This means that most schools cannot pre-cool ahead of peak hours, reduce energy output for empty rooms, or participate in demand response programs that pay utility customers to reduce load when grid demand is high. The waste is largest on the hottest days, when the grid is most strained and electricity is most expensive. Modern electric heat pumps, especially with networked controls, can heat and cool classrooms with more than double the efficiency, saving schools money on their electricity bills that can be reinvested into programs, staff salaries, or other facility needs.
Nearly half of HVAC units still lack wildfire smoke filters
Wildfires are increasing in frequency and intensity across California. Fire-related school closures are the single largest source of lost instructional time over the past decade. But when school HVAC systems are equipped with modern filters, schools can stay open, allowing students and staff to breathe clean air during smoke events. Students and school staff may not have clean indoor air at home, making schools with modern HVAC the safest place to be.
Public health agencies recommend MERV-13 filters for wildfire smoke. CalSHAPE addressed this directly: during Phase 1 maintenance visits, assessors installed the best filter each unit could support, upgrading the filters in more than 9,000 units on the spot. But when the assessors left, 49 percent of units still had filters below MERV-13. Those units would need to be repaired or replaced before they can protect children and school staff from wildfire smoke.
Most units can’t deliver enough fresh air to classrooms
Adequate ventilation is critical for school buildings — it keeps the air fresh and prevents airborne pathogens from building up. Students who spend time in poorly ventilated school spaces are 50–70 percent more likely to suffer respiratory illnesses like asthma. Among the 65,991 units with ventilation data in our sample, 63 percent could not deliver the outside air a classroom requires. Roughly a third of units assessed under the current protocol cited broken hardware as a reason for poor ventilation: stuck dampers, dead actuators, failed controllers, and blocked intakes.
2 out of 3 HVAC systems run on fossil gas
Among the units whose heating type we could classify, 65 percent burn fossil gas and 34 percent are electric. Two out of three units recommended for replacement burn fossil gas. HVAC is one of the largest sources of on-site fossil fuel combustion in public buildings. Swapping a gas furnace out for a heat pump cuts climate pollution and local nitrogen-oxide pollution. Schools rarely replace HVAC equipment, so the units installed in this replacement cycle are likely to still be running in 2050, past California’s 2045 carbon neutrality goal.
Most assessed schools are in underserved communities
Statute directs funds first to schools in underserved communities — those in a state-designated low-income community, a top-25 percent CalEnviroScreen tract, an area where at least 75 percent of students qualify for free or reduced-price meals, a disadvantaged community with median household income below 80 percent of the statewide average, or on tribal lands. In our sample, 66 percent of assessed schools met at least one of these criteria. At the median assessed school, 70 percent of students qualify for free or reduced-price meals. These are the districts least able to fund replacements from their own budgets, least likely to pass a local facilities bond, and therefore least likely to receive matching state funding from the School Facilities Program. These schools are more likely to rely solely on 100 percent grant programs like CalSHAPE to fix their HVAC systems.
Source: CalSHAPE assessment data joined to the CEC’s SEES public webmap school data; 1,611 assessed schools with state community data. Underserved status (Pub. Util. Code §1612) is flagged from the CEC’s own eligibility data.
This is happening in legislative districts across the state
Our sample includes assessed schools in 70 of 80 Assembly districts and 39 of 40 Senate districts. The chart below shows the legislative districts with the most deficient HVAC units in our sample. The interactive data tool gives a more granular look by district: every Assembly and Senate district, every participating local education agency (LEA), and a school-by-school breakdown of each campus’s units, replacement recommendations, and heating fuel mix. Members can look up exactly which schools in their district have been assessed so far and what the assessment found. Note: since CalSHAPE was originally funded from utility efficiency budgets, the program was only available to schools in SDG&E, SCE, PG&E, or SoCalGas service territory.
For example, consider Assembly District 29, represented by Speaker Robert Rivas. Our sample includes 49 assessed schools in the district, covering 2,534 HVAC units across 63 buildings. Assessors recommended full replacement for 46 percent of those units, and 58 percent had at least one documented deficiency. About half of classified units burn gas. These are high-need schools: 37 of the 49 are in underserved communities as defined by the CalSHAPE statute. At the median assessed school, 83 percent of students qualify for free or reduced-price meals. In total, LEAs in the district received Phase 1 funding to assess at least 90 schools, but no schools have received Phase 2 funds to fix the problems that were identified.
Near-term policy recommendations: Reopen and extend CalSHAPE
Across 71,144 assessed HVAC units, we found that more than half of school HVAC equipment needs replacement, most of it is inefficient, much of it can’t deliver the fresh air or the wildfire smoke filtration classrooms require, and two-thirds of the replacement queue burns fossil gas that contributes to climate change. The assessed schools disproportionately serve low-income students.
CalSHAPE is California’s only 100 percent grant program that can help fix these issues. Wildfire smoke and extreme heat are both increasing in California. Around 92 percent of Californians say the state should prioritize air conditioning in schools. Infectious disease transmission is always a risk in crowded classrooms, particularly amid an increase in measles cases and in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Modern HVAC systems can address each of these problems. A cost-benefit analysis of CalSHAPE HVAC upgrades estimates $30 in value for every dollar invested, mostly from better educational and health outcomes. CalSHAPE prioritizes schools in underserved communities, which carry higher environmental and health burdens. The upgrade work creates good local jobs.
But CalSHAPE funding was abruptly cut off before schools could finish the work. In total, 4,688 California schools participated in Phase 1 and have documented HVAC deficiencies; only 172 have received funds to fix them. Roughly $194 million of CalSHAPE’s funding is still frozen in the program’s account. Without legislative action, that money reverts to the investor-owned utilities on December 1, 2026, and the program sunsets on January 1, 2027. The funds are also allocated in separate buckets by utility territory. If CalSHAPE applications were reopened, most remaining funds would be available for SDG&E and SCE customers, with only a small amount remaining for PG&E and SoCalGas customers.
Allowing CalSHAPE funding to expire would not meaningfully benefit ratepayers. There is no statutory requirement that the funds be returned to ratepayers. But even if every dollar were passed through, a Senate Budget Subcommittee analysis found bills would drop by about $2 per month for SDG&E customers, $1.25 for SCE customers, and $0.20 for PG&E customers, for a single year.
If the money goes back to the utilities, most of the needed repairs will not happen at all. Many of these districts struggle to pass local facilities bonds, federal ESSER relief funds have expired, and the Proposition 2 statewide modernization bond is already depleted. Schools denied grant funding will most likely defer these repairs indefinitely. That means another generation of students will be stuck in classrooms and school buildings with outdated equipment that cannot keep them safe, healthy, and in school — especially as extreme heat and wildfires become more common and severe.
Preserving CalSHAPE is the best opportunity to inject school HVAC funding in the near term and allow schools to finish critical repairs and replacements. With this in mind, the Legislature and Governor’s office should:
- Statutorily extend CalSHAPE so districts can address identified HVAC deficiencies.
- Have the CEC reopen applications so that schools can apply for the remaining $194 million in the CalSHAPE fund.
- Prioritize remaining funds for HVAC upgrades and repairs by allowing funds to flow from the plumbing side of the program, which drew much less demand than HVAC.
Releasing CalSHAPE funds does not deplete the General Fund or raise bills for ratepayers. It puts money intended for schools to work fixing major HVAC problems that have already been identified. California should prioritize student health and safety over giving money back to utilities. A broad coalition of education, environmental, health, and labor organizations supports these actions.