More than 1 in 3 Wake schools have lost instructional time due to HVAC issues
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- More than 1 in 3 Wake schools lost class time from HVAC failures since 2023.
- Wake County plans to raise maintenance spending and reclassify staff pay.
- Deferred maintenance exceeds $600M, with HVAC issues driving emergency fixes.
Wake County school leaders want to wean the public off the expectation that schools will close due to HVAC issues after dozens of schools have lost instructional time since 2023.
More than a third of Wake County’s 199 schools have lost at least one instructional day in the past two years due to HVAC issues, according to a presentation the school board received Tuesday. The district hopes to address the problem through increased maintenance and by changing public expectations about what happens when there’s an HVAC issue.
“Part of what we have to do now is really think long and hard about if we actually close a school because now many people in the community are expecting that we do something, and that is a closure if we have temperature problems with a chiller not working or a boiler system not working,” Superintendent Robert Taylor told the Wake County Board of Commissioners last month. “We’ve got to do a little work In terms of how we are able to put that genie back in the bottle.”
But Taylor said the district won’t leave students in unsafe conditions if a problem warrants an early dismissal..
Taylor laid out the district’s plan to commissioners on May 22 and repeated it to the school board June 24.
Not going to put people in ‘unsafe schools’
Wake began having a spike of HVAC closures in January 2023 when some schools got too cold. Later, schools began dismissing when it got too hot.
When HVAC systems act up, Wake looks at whether the temperature is affecting learning or safety and if instruction can continue effectively. Telling parents that temperatures are rising is one thing, but telling them they have to pick up their child because of an early dismissal is another matter, Taylor said.
“When systems fail it is something that we have to address,” Taylor said. “But sometimes those situations may be a little more uncomfortable than what we planned. But we’re not going to put people in unsafe positions or unsafe schools; I just want to reaffirm that.”
Taylor said many of the schools that closed have recently had their HVAC systems upgraded or are scheduled to get upgrades. He said they were able to make HVAC repairs quickly enough so that no school lost multiple days of instruction this school year.
Not enough spent on maintenance in the past
Taylor traced the HVAC problems to insufficient maintenance staff, aging school facilities and not enough money being spent on maintenance.
Based on industry guidelines, Taylor said Wake should have at least 54 HVAC technicians. Wake has 20, so it hires private companies to do a lot of the work.
Wake can’t hire enough maintenance people, Taylor said, because they can earn more in the private sector. For instance, he said a Wake boiler technician would only make $77,000 a year after 32 years.
At the same time, 22% of Wake’s schools are 20 to 30 years old and are entering an age when infrastructure systems require major repairs or replacement, according to Taylor.
Only half the district’s work orders on HVAC systems in the 2023-24 school year were for preventive maintenance. The rest were for emergency work orders and urgent work orders.
Last fall, the school district estimated it had over $200 million in deferred HVAC needs, and over $600 million in total deferred maintenance.
“Some of the decisions that we’ve made as it relates to how we maintain our facilities have now caught up with us,” Taylor said. “I can tell you Wake County is not the only school district in that position.”
Plan to increase school maintenance spending
Taylor told commissioners the district has a plan moving forward.
One approach is hiring more maintenance staff and reclassifying the positions to pay them more money.
Taylor said it will ultimately take more money, but some will come from shifting funds from other parts of the budget.
For instance, Taylor said they’re looking at using money that would have gone for purchasing new school sites and buying new laptop computers for students in kindergarten through second grade.
The district also made $18.7 million in cuts and cost-saving measures such as changing school thermostat settings.
Commissioners had cited the school district’s willingness to make cuts when they agreed to provide a $40..3 million increase in funding for the upcoming school year.
“There are some things that we do that we need to just stop doing,” Taylor said. “Not that they’re bad things. But sometimes we have to make a choice about what it is that we’re going to do within the school district, and all programs and all efforts are not going to align equally.”
This story was originally published June 23, 2025 at 2:25 PM.
