Climate change is real, at least within our building the past three days.
Attending school right now feels as though you are attending two different climate zones within 8 hours. The 100s and 200s sit in the high 70s, while the 300s and 400s reach up to 85 degrees. Walking down Main Street, you can feel this change hitting the 400s staircase as a wave of hot and stuffy air floods your lungs and sticks to your skin. However, it doesn’t stop there. Walking up the back staircases that lead from the 300s to the 400s, another heatwave begins as the sun beats down through the window panes. As you reach the top stairs, you can see every classroom sitting idle, teachers spread across the school, finding a room that sits at a comfortable temperature. Even though the temperature remains high, the district is working with vendors all across the country to dissipate the heat wave that encompasses the school.
According to William Chizek the director of operations for Millard Public Schools, he says that the new gear box has been installed and they are expecting to fire it up as soon as possible.
In the meantime, administrators have been circulating throughout the building checking in on the learning conditions in the 60 percent of the building that is without air conditioning.
Assistant Principal Michala Wragge was conducting her morning temperature check during first block today.
“There’s only so much that we can ‘get through,’ Wragge said. “So that’s what our ‘temperature check’ right now is.”
“How are people doing? How frustrated are people? We get it. You can only be positive about things for so long,” Wragge said.
Wednesday was the worst day of the week so far.
“I haven’t been in the 400s since yesterday but I don’t want to go back,” sophomore Trevon Shada said. “I was sweating so much in 2nd block, I was glistening.”
Wednesday after school, 26 temporary room units were installed in the 300 and 400 rooms, but they stopped working overnight. Teachers and students returned to classrooms on Thursday with little change from the high temps they had Wednesday. The units overloaded the circuits, so teachers are continuing to find alternate rooms for class today.
“Most of us have moved to other classrooms or areas in the school for each block that we teach,” German teacher Tim Seeger said. “I’m in the library (collaboration room) for this block. When I was in my classroom for PRIDE Time, it was still 84 degrees,” he said.
Social Studies teacher Jacob Battaglia teaches in room 416 but today he is in 320 A1.
“It’s probably mid to high 70s down here and the problem is that heat rises,” he said.
“When you go up the side stairs the second you hit that landing you can just feel the air change up there.”
Should the gearbox fix be unsuccessful, a backup portable chiller is on its way from Tennessee on a flatbed trailer. But even that had its share of trouble. On its way the truck carrying it broke down and has now been picked up by a new truck and is enroute to Omaha, Chizek said. The chiller will be parked on that flatbed truck in the west lot for 10 days to ensure that if the new gearbox fails, a backup is on site.
The first temporary chiller was in Chicago and set to be delivered Wednesday, but it failed its inspection and was not sent.
The troubles started midday on Tuesday when students and staff started to notice an increase in temperature. Principal Heidi Weaver sent an email to staff that laid out the extent of the problem. She said that more than 60 percent of the building was without air conditioning. Throughout the email it concluded that our AC units gearbox went out causing the loss of cool air in the building. Staff was also informed that they were looking to get portable units placed in the 400s and 300s. Many places including the senior lounge, the library and the cafeteria are being used as alternate class spaces since they have AC.
At 9:05 a.m. on Wednesday, Weaver sent another email stating that the 400s were above 80 degrees and pushing 85 and the district continued to work with five different companies to find a portable tower. Updates are sent out regularly and at 11:54 a.m. staff was notified that portable AC units were to be delivered placed into the 300s and 400s.
According to Chizek, Millard North and West also had some outages in the past few days, but Millard South’s outage was more widespread and a lot of resources are in place to get it up and running.
