Ventilation

Ventilation is an area where the high school, and the town of Brookline have focused much of their attention. The current five air changes per hour in rooms at the high school meet the standard for “excellent airflow” according to a Harvard study for classrooms at full capacity.

Every classroom has a designated maximum capacity, and the standards in use for ventilation are based around a classroom at full capacity. PSB never sees a full capacity classroom even in a normal year. Thus, increasing the number of students in each classroom, even by a large amount, does not diminish safety nor affect the quality and efficacy of the ventilation system.

Nonetheless, PSB has decided to tweak ventilation to make sure all the spaces that will have to be used in the coming weeks meet this standard of excellence.

The ventilation system is one of the driving forces of the low rates of in-school transmission in Brookline. All the air exchanges and the increased filtration allow for a relaxing of some of the other protocols, namely those that pertain to social distancing and unmasked times, as we move to a four day in-person learning environment.