Lupe Sifuentes-Park Knows Which Rooms Stay Cool When the Grid Goes Down and She Doesn't Announce It

The Docket's Future Tense section publishes speculative fiction alongside reported journalism. What follows is a hypothetical interview — the interviewee, the school, and the district are invented. The building's technical details are grounded in real facilities data from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the EPA, and HVAC engineering sources. The character is fiction. The infrastructure she describes is not.

We spoke with Guadalupe "Lupe" Sifuentes-Park over a video call in July 2044. She is the Director of Building Services at Mesquite Ridge Middle School in West Texas, a 1950s-era building with additions from the 1980s and 2000s that serves roughly 340 students during the school year and an unspecified number of community members during what Sifuentes-Park refers to, without irony, as "the other season." She was eating sunflower seeds throughout the interview and occasionally pausing to check something on a tablet she kept just off-screen. She cracked one open with her teeth before answering most questions, which gave the conversation a rhythm she seemed to prefer. Her grandmother cleaned the same building when it opened. She has held her current role for nineteen years.

You've described Mesquite Ridge as a building that "grew a second job." What does that mean in practice?

Lupe: It means I manage a middle school nine months a year and a — I don't know what to call it. A facility. The rest of the time. Cooling center, smoke shelter, charging station, overnight stay site when things get bad enough. We had seventy-one people sleep in the gym last August. I know because I counted the cots.

When did the building start functioning this way?

Lupe: Slowly, and then I looked up and it was just how things worked. The cooling center designation came in maybe 2031, 2032. That was daytime only — people come in, sit in the cafeteria, drink water, go home. Fine. Then we had the grid event in '36, and people couldn't go home because their houses were 108 inside, and someone from the county called and said, "Can they stay?" And I said, "The generator doesn't run the whole building." And they said, "Which part does it run?" And that was the night I became whatever I am now.

Which part does it run?

Lupe: Gym, main office, one hallway of classrooms on the east side. Emergency lighting everywhere else. Fire suppression, security. That's it. The generator was sized for keeping the lights on during a power outage so kids can evacuate safely. It was not sized for keeping two hundred people cool overnight in July.¹ So when we shelter, everyone's in the gym. The second floor loses cooling within about two hours. I don't announce that.

Why not?

You mentioned the HVAC system. Can you describe what you're working with?

Lupe: The original wing has unit ventilators from — honestly, I don't know the exact year. They're older than me. The 1980s addition has a central air handler that I would describe as "willing." The 2000s wing actually has decent equipment, but the ductwork was done cheap and there's a pressure drop problem I've been writing up since 2029.² Nobody reads those write-ups. I keep submitting them because someday someone will, and I want the date on record.

We're running MERV 13 filters now, which is a big improvement from the 8s we had when I started. But MERV 13 is basically my ceiling. Anything higher and the airflow drops enough that the east classrooms don't cool.³

What happens during smoke events?

Lupe: (long pause) That's the hard one. During smoke, I need to keep the building in recirculate mode — close the outdoor air dampers so you're not pulling smoke in. But recirculate mode means no fresh air coming in, which means CO₂ builds up, which means it gets stuffy, which means people open doors. And then I'm chasing doors.⁴ That's my smoke job. Chasing doors.

The filters clog faster during smoke, too. Heavy smoke, a MERV 13 can start degrading in weeks.⁵ I've got a pressure gauge on one air handler — one — so I'm checking that and then guessing on the other three. Professional guessing. I've gotten good at it.

You've talked about students knowing the building in ways that surprised you. Can you give an example?

Lupe: Sure. During the smoke week in '41, I noticed the seventh graders were all clustering near the east-wing bathrooms during breaks. I thought it was a social thing, some drama. It wasn't. Those bathrooms are right next to the air handler with the newest filters. The air in there was noticeably cleaner. They figured that out before I mapped it. They'd been doing it for days.

Another one. The kids know which outlets in the gym are on the backup circuit. I didn't label them. They just tested them during outages. By the time I made a formal charging plan, they'd already sorted it out. They had a whole system. Younger kids' phones first, then the ones whose parents needed to reach them, then everyone else. A twelve-year-old explained this to me like I was slow.

Does that bother you?

Lupe: No. It makes me tired in a way I don't think I'll ever find the right word for. They're twelve and they've already figured out triage. Nobody taught them. They treat the smoke calendar the way I treated snow days growing up. It's just what school is. And I watch adults — teachers, parents, county people — still acting like each event is a surprise. The kids stopped being surprised years ago. I don't know what to do with that.

What can't you tell parents?

Lupe: (sets down sunflower seeds) I can't tell them that when we have smoke and heat at the same time, I'm choosing. Cooling or filtration. Not both. Not fully. I can't tell them the gym's portable air cleaners are rated for a space about 40 percent the size of the gym at full shelter capacity. I can't tell them that the transition from "cooling center" to "overnight shelter" is technically a legal decision that's supposed to involve the Red Cross and county counsel, and that what actually happens is someone calls me at 9 PM and says, "Lupe, can they stay?"⁶

I can't tell them I store 48 cots in the locker room and six of them are broken and I've requisitioned replacements twice. I could tell them that last part, actually. I just don't want to watch their faces while they do the math.

Has anyone formally named what Mesquite Ridge has become?

Lupe: No. And I've stopped waiting for that. The district calls it a "community resilience site" in grant applications. The county calls it a "designated cooling center." FEMA would call it a "shelter of last resort" if they looked at it, which they haven't. The kids call it school. I call it the building. It doesn't need a name. It needs a new air handler and about forty more cots.

What would you want someone reading this to understand?

Sifuentes-Park ended the call shortly after to check on a compressor that had been cycling irregularly. She said she'd know within ten minutes whether it was a refrigerant issue or just the heat load. "It's usually just the heat load," she said. "It's always just the heat load."

Footnotes

1. Most school backup generators are sized for emergency lighting, fire alarms, and communications — not full HVAC operation. A 4-ton AC unit alone requires at least a 17 kW generator. See Generac Industrial, Educational Facility Backup Generators: https://www.generac.com/industrial/industry-expertise/education/ ↩

2. As of 2020, an estimated 41% of U.S. school districts needed to update or replace HVAC systems in at least half their schools — roughly 36,000 buildings. GAO-20-494: https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-20-494.pdf ↩

3. MERV 13 filters remove approximately 69% of wildfire smoke particles. Higher-efficiency filters create greater airflow resistance; most school systems cannot accommodate above MERV 13 without professional assessment. See EPA, Wildfires and Indoor Air Quality in Schools: https://www.epa.gov/emergencies-iaq/wildfires-and-indoor-air-quality-schools-and-commercial-buildings ↩

4. Outdoor air economizers in large HVAC systems can amplify indoor smoke issues by drawing in particulate matter. Effective smoke protection requires balancing filtration with controlled ventilation. See Camfil, High-Efficiency Air Filters During Wildfire Season: https://cleanair.camfil.us/2025/07/08/how-high-efficiency-air-filters-can-help-protect-indoor-air-quality-during-wildfire-season/ ↩

5. Heavy wildfire smoke can degrade a MERV 13 filter in 30–60 days. EPA recommends adding pressure gauge ports to air-handling units to monitor filter condition — but notes "at least one" as a baseline, indicating most buildings lack even that. See EPA, Schools as Cleaner Air and Cooling Centers: https://www.epa.gov/schools/schools-cleaner-air-and-cooling-centers-tips-facility-managers-principals-teachers-and ↩

6. Standard cooling centers are designed for non-continuous, non-overnight operation. The transition to overnight shelter formally requires coordination with the American Red Cross and legal counsel. See Contra Costa Health Services, Warming and Cooling Centers Operations Guide: https://www.ccbh.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Warming-Cooling-Center-Operations-Guide-Rev-7.docx.pdf ↩