Faulty AC units keep shutting Wake schools down. It won’t be easy or cheap to fix.
This week’s heat wave is causing more Wake County schools to shut down early because of their air conditioning systems breaking down.
Students at Sanderson High and Wakefield Middle were sent home early on Wednesday due to not having air conditioning at either Raleigh school. Both schools reopened Thursday morning.
The early dismissals come as school administrators reported this week that the district has $140 million in HVAC needs and a severe shortage of technicians to maintain the equipment.
School board members told staff that more needs to be done to address the situation and to communicate the extent of the problems to the public.
“We want great instruction, and we’re obligated to pay for that,” said school board chair Chris Heagarty. “But if kids can’t be in school because it’s either too hot or too cold, they’re not going to get that great instruction.”
But maintenance staff warned there’s only so much they can do given their limited resources.
“My pie is finite,” said Nate Slavik, senior director for maintenance and operations. “We cut it up to provide all sorts of services, not just to HVAC, and I don’t want to limit any of those services so that we can do any one thing.
“We’re trying to do our best with the resource we have to get everybody everything. It’s just a struggle.”
Schools feel problems are ‘ignored’
Over the past year, schools across the district have sent students home early or closed for the day because air conditioning systems were not keeping classrooms cool enough.
Administrators briefed the school board’s facilities committee this week on the status of HVAC systems across the county.
Wake has 5,600 pieces of HVAC equipment at more than 200 facilities. Half of the 5,800 emergency work orders over the past 12 months have been related to HVAC issues.
There have been another 2,300 HVAC work orders over the past year that were labeled as urgent.
At least one principal has stopped submitting HVAC work orders because she feels they’re being ignored, according to school board vice chair Monika Johnson-Hostler.
“She lost teachers because they’re in rooms that don’t have adequate heating and air,” Johnson-Hostler said. “We talked about people leaving for schools that may be harder to teach in. We have people leaving for schools that don’t have an HVAC issue.”
50% HVAC technician vacancy rate
Administrators said Wake doesn’t have enough staff to adequately maintain the district’s aging HVAC equipment.
Wake only has eight of the 15 HVAC technician positions filled. Both of the specialized chiller technician positions are vacant.
The district now heavily relies on contractors to do much of the HVAC work.
Insufficient pay was cited for the vacancies, so board members asked about making the salaries more competitive. Higher pay is under consideration, but Superintendent Robert Taylor warned that will only go so far.
“If we get into a bidding war with private industry, we’re going to lose every time,” Taylor told board members.
$140 million in HVAC needs
Staff estimated Wake’s HVAC needs to be around $140 million. Wake now spends $22.5 million a year on major HVAC repairs.
Chiller units at eight schools are under repair. More than 20 schools have HVAC designs that don’t adequately dehumidify classrooms.
Work on HVAC projects at 42 schools is in various stages.
Administrators said they need 16 months of lead time on projects because it takes that long for some chiller equipment to arrive.
“The work takes people, and if you increase the budget by $50 million next year, we’ll have $30-35 million still sitting in the pot because we don’t have the manpower to do it,” said Tony Champion, director of lifecycle and facility assessments.
Wake blames the state
In North Carolina, the state is responsible for providing the money to operate public schools. Counties are primarily charged with providing the money to build and maintain schools.
Heagarty, the board chair, accused state lawmakers of not providing enough money to operate schools. He said it’s caused the school system to rely on the county to help with operational needs such as providing higher salaries for teachers.
“The cost is that those are resources that aren’t available for what local governments are supposed to do, which is take care of the bricks and mortar and all these important systems,” Heagarty said.
Board members asked staff to improve communication with the public about what it would take to improve the HVAC situation.
“You have a board that would like us to be more aggressive in finding the funding, with an understanding that while we do that we’ve got to increase the staffing levels,” said board member Sam Hershey, chair of the facilities committee. “Otherwise finding that funding is not going to be impactful.”
