How to Get Free Air Purifiers in Your Kids' School

By Elisabeth Kwak-Hefferan

I was super-excited to hear that Montana's Department of Public Health and Human Services (DPHHS) is offering free HEPA air purifiers for all K-12 schools in the state--what an excellent way to ensure clean air for our kids during wildfire season and beyond! But when I asked the principal at my son't school to order them, it quickly became clear to me that school administrators are swamped, and that ordering these air purifiers might fall through the cracks. No problem: I offered to order them myself. The order form is really simple, and filling it out took me all of 15 minutes.

With the principal's blessing, my husband and I walked around the school with our son right after the final bell. Armed with a regular old tape measure, we measured the length and width of each room that would need a HEPA purifier (there are instructions and tips for this step here). This is important because there are a bunch of different HEPA units being offered for rooms of varying sizes--for example, one unit can handle a room of about 550 square feet, while another can do almost 2,000 square feet. One kind will work for a smaller classroom, while you'd want another in the gym or library. In fact, we ordered several units for the largest rooms. 

The measuring step was even a nice geometry lesson for my son, who held one end of the tape measure and helped us leapfrog it to measure the biggest rooms. We measured every room where students and/or staff spend time: classrooms, the art room, the music room, the gym, and library, the teacher's lounge...Then I calculated the area of each room and used that info to determine how many units of each kind we needed.

I went over a draft of the order form with the principal (this took less than 5 minutes), made a few adjustments based on his feedback, then filled out the final form digitally. I emailed this directly to the coordinator (his contact info is on the order form), identifying myself as a parent volunteer and CC'ing the principal. Ta-dah! The state handles the rest, and next wildfire season, I can rest easier knowing everyone in that school will be breathing clean air. 

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