Why HVAC Contractors Hold the Key to Healthier Schools, and What Most Districts Still Get Wrong About Air Filtration
A new educational guide from Brookaire reveals why upgrading an air filter without evaluating the system behind it can make indoor air quality worse, not better.
Fair Lawn, NJ, Feb. 03, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- There is a quiet crisis unfolding inside American classrooms, and it has nothing to do with curriculum standards or teacher shortages. It is about the air students breathe for six hours a day. In a typical 900-square-foot classroom, 30 children sit shoulder to shoulder in a space originally designed decades ago, relying on HVAC systems that were never engineered for the filtration demands now being placed on them.
That disconnect between what school buildings were built to do and what parents, administrators, and public health authorities now expect them to do has created an urgent knowledge gap. And according to a newly published educational guide from Brookaire, the national air filtration company headquartered in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, the professionals best positioned to close that gap are not policymakers or consultants. They are HVAC contractors.
The Air Filtration Upgrade That Backfires
The instinct among school administrators is understandable. A facility director reads about the benefits of higher-rated air filters, orders a case of MERV 13 replacements, and instructs maintenance to install them building-wide. On paper, it looks like a win. In practice, it can quietly sabotage the entire system.
As the guide from Brookaire explains, higher-efficiency air filters demand more static pressure to push air through the media. When a MERV 13 filter is installed in a system originally designed for MERV 6, the fan may lack the capacity to maintain adequate airflow. The result is reduced air circulation, frozen coils in summer, insufficient heating in winter, and an overall decline in indoor air quality despite the upgrade. The full breakdown is available in Brookaire's educational resource, Indoor Air Quality in Schools: What HVAC Contractors Need to Know.
This is the central argument of the guide, and it carries real weight for the thousands of school districts across the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic that are now fielding questions from concerned parents about ventilation and air quality. Good intentions are not enough. Technical assessment is essential.
Why Schools Present a Unique Challenge for Air Quality
Commercial office buildings allow for natural movement. People shift between conference rooms, common areas, and private offices. Occupancy fluctuates throughout the day. Schools operate differently. Students remain in the same room, breathing the same recirculated air, for hours at a stretch. That density of occupancy in a confined space creates filtration demands that generic commercial guidelines simply do not address.
Compounding the problem is building age. Across New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Maryland, and the broader Northeast region, schools constructed from the 1920s through the 1990s remain in active use. Each era brought different HVAC configurations, different ductwork limitations, and different equipment capacities.
Brookaire's guide emphasizes that this patchwork of building generations makes a one-size-fits-all approach to air filtration not only ineffective but potentially damaging.
Budget constraints add a third layer of difficulty. School districts are not working with unlimited capital improvement funds. They need solutions that perform within existing systems and existing maintenance schedules, which is precisely why contractor expertise matters more than product selection alone.
Understanding MERV Ratings and Why the Numbers Alone Are Misleading
MERV, which stands for Minimum Efficiency Reporting Value, is the industry standard for measuring an air filter's ability to capture airborne particles. Higher numbers indicate greater particle capture. A MERV 4 or MERV 6 filter, common in older school systems, captures large debris like dust and lint but allows fine particulates, pollen, and respiratory irritants to pass through.
Upgrading to MERV 10 or MERV 11 represents a meaningful improvement in capture efficiency for general classrooms and common areas. Stepping up to MERV 13 is appropriate for health-sensitive spaces such as the nurse's office, special education rooms, and early childhood areas, provided the HVAC system can handle the additional resistance.
The critical distinction, and the one Brookaire's guide underscores, is that MERV ratings measure what a filter can capture in isolation. They do not account for whether the system pushing air through that filter has the fan capacity, ductwork sizing, and static pressure headroom to do so effectively. A contractor who can evaluate those variables is delivering expertise that no product label can replace.
A Room-by-Room Approach to Air Filtration
One of the most practical insights in Brookaire's guide is the recommendation that schools avoid treating every space identically. A kindergarten classroom with 20 five-year-olds has fundamentally different air quality needs than an administrative office where three staff members work throughout the day. A cafeteria serving 400 students across three lunch periods generates a volume and type of airborne particulate that a gymnasium storage closet never will.
The guide suggests pleated MERV 10 filters as a strong starting point for general classrooms, with MERV 11 for high-traffic zones like cafeterias, corridors, and auditoriums. For the nurse's office and other health-priority spaces, MERV 13 or standalone HEPA units may be warranted, depending on what the central system can support. This tiered approach allows school districts to allocate their budgets where filtration improvements will have the greatest impact.
Contractors as Strategic Partners, Not Parts Suppliers
The shift happening in school IAQ is not just about better air filters. It is about changing the relationship between contractors and the institutions they serve. As Indoor Air Quality in Schools: What HVAC Contractors Need to Know makes clear, the contractors who will build lasting relationships in this market are the ones who can walk into a mechanical room, assess equipment capacity, measure static pressure at the filter rack, evaluate ductwork conditions, and deliver an honest, system-level recommendation.
That level of assessment goes well beyond swapping one filter for another. It means understanding what complaints staff and students are reporting, whether it’s stuffiness, dust accumulation, persistent odors, or respiratory issues. It means reviewing filter change histories and identifying whether maintenance frequency is undermining whatever filtration is already in place. And it means being willing to tell a facility director that the answer is not always the most expensive filter on the shelf.
Building Maintenance Around the Academic Calendar
Brookaire's guide also addresses a logistical reality that contractors working in commercial buildings rarely encounter: the academic calendar. Schools operate on a rhythm of occupancy spikes and scheduled vacations that should dictate when filter changes happen. The guide recommends aggressive service before students return in September, a mid-year changeout during winter break when buildings can be accessed without disrupting instruction, and a spring refresh before allergy season reaches full intensity.
For contractors managing multiple school accounts across Northeast cities like Newark, Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore, and Arlington, that scheduling discipline is what separates reliable service partners from reactive vendors. Scheduled delivery programs and organized job tagging systems help ensure the right filters arrive at the right building on the right day, reducing coordination headaches and emergency procurement runs.
The Custom Air Filter Problem in Aging School Buildings
Anyone who has serviced HVAC systems in older educational facilities knows the frustration of arriving on site expecting a standard 20x25x4 filter opening and finding a nonstandard dimension that was custom-built decades ago. Schools across the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic have accumulated generations of renovations, additions, and equipment replacements that leave behind a patchwork of filter sizes and rack configurations.
Brookaire's guide flags this as a significant but often overlooked contributor to poor IAQ. When filters do not fit properly, air bypasses the media entirely, rendering even a high MERV filter ineffective. Access to custom-sized filters, manufactured to precise specifications, eliminates that gap and ensures consistent filtration performance across an entire building.
Why This Conversation Is Happening Now
Five years ago, most school facility managers did not think twice about air filtration. Filters were ordered based on price, changed when someone remembered, and replaced with whatever was available. That era is over. Parents across the country now expect schools to take indoor air quality seriously, and school administrators are fielding questions they never anticipated.
That pressure is creating real demand for contractors who understand the science, the systems, and the tradeoffs involved in school air filtration. Indoor Air Quality in Schools: What HVAC Contractors Need to Know provides the educational foundation for contractors ready to meet that demand with competence and credibility.
About Brookaire
Brookaire is a premier air filtration company headquartered in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, serving HVAC contractors across New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Delaware, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. The company provides commercial and institutional air filters, custom-sized filtration solutions, scheduled job site delivery, and educational resources designed to help contractors deliver measurable indoor air quality improvements in schools, healthcare facilities, data centers, and commercial buildings.
Media Contact:
Lynne Laake
Brookaire
T: (800) 295-3047
F: Friend Brookaire on Facebook
T: Follow Brookaire on Instagram
Y: Watch Brookaire Videos on YouTube
Source: https://www.brookaire.com/
Legal Disclaimer:
EIN Presswire provides this news content "as is" without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the author above.
