The smell hits Kitty Hernlen the second she walks into the classroom at Bayvale Elementary School.

“Sniff,” she said to Scottie Paschal.

“Yeah, smell that,” he said.

“It’s in here somewhere,” Hernlen said.

They quickly track down the source of the floral smell, an air freshener in a cabinet, and confiscate it as a potential trigger to an asthma attack.

Hernlen, an assistant professor of respiratory therapy at Georgia Health Sciences University, is using a $30,000 grant from the W.G. Raoul Foundation in Atlanta to help Bayvale and schools in Warren and Emanuel counties in east central Georgia improve their indoor air quality and potentially help control student asthma.

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Members of the conversion crew take a break as the main scoreboard is lowered to the floor to be worked on as the arena gets ready for the next concert at State Farm Arena, Thursday, October 2, 2025, in Atlanta. The crew was working on creating a stage for the Friday, Oct. 3 Maxwell concert. (Jason Getz/AJC)

Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com