As you might have noticed, there have been a few problems with the school’s heating this year. These vents were brand new over the summer, actually a part of the reason that the school started later. The school was handling these problems by taking small measures about the sound, temperature, and also trying to answer everyone’s questions.
Ms. Diane Workman, superintendent, sent an email to parents about this inconvenience on Friday, Nov. 3. Her email informed parents about the following things. The 3rd and 4th grade wing and the entire middle school would be without heat Monday, Nov. 6 through Thursday, Nov. 9. Since the school would be colder than usual, she also told parents to possibly bundle up their children. Lastly, she mentioned that they would be continuing to re-evaluate the temperatures each day to determine if they should continue with in-person classes or switch to virtual instead.
I talked to Mr. Jeffery Griffith, middle school principal, and he definitely helped to answer all of my questions. In this interview he helped me answer many questions such as how they fixed the problems, how they accommodated the teachers with the temperature, and other known problems.
“They basically had to drain all of the lines and then refill them, but to do that they had to shut all the systems down while they did their work,” Mr. Jeffery Griffith, middle school principal, said. He also added he wasn’t sure if that was the way to explain it; it was just the way they had explained it to him.
Accommodations weren’t needed by many teachers but some teachers were offered space heaters to help with the temperature because it was very inconsistent throughout the classrooms. Also some teachers took their own measures such as piling heavy objects over the vents to contain the sound caused by the vents rattling.
“Luckily we got pretty good weather, there were a couple of days that got a little cold so if there was anyone that had asked for it or needed it, we did have some space heaters around the building, so that was the main accommodation. We tried to let people know it could be colder than normal but it was really weird because in some rooms it was really cold one day and then I would go to another room and it wasn’t,” Mr. Griffith said.
Another issue that was addressed was the loud noise that some of the univents were making. This noise caused disruption to classes and made it difficult for the students to hear the teacher.
“That’s been an ongoing issue with some of the classrooms, Mrs. McCanna’s you have probably heard, it hasn’t been in every classroom, but there’s probably four or five teachers who have that issue. That’s another thing that the company is still working on,” Mr. Griffith said.
Mr Griffith mentioned that the systems were installed over the summer, but in order to not delay the school year more they had to wait to install the heating until now. Since the heating is now installed, the systems are officially finished, and there are no more delays as of now.
