Wake teachers say school AC units aren’t working. That will mean more early releases.
Teachers at more than 50 Wake County schools are complaining about malfunctioning air conditioning units that have already caused some schools to close early this summer because of extreme heat.
And units across the school system will be put under even more pressure when all of the traditional-calendar schools open Monday.
Wake County teachers on a private Facebook group have compiled a list of HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) complaints at more than 25% of the district’s 198 schools. School administrators are blaming maintenance staffing vacancies and parts shortages for the uncomfortable building conditions.
“What we’re doing now and the service levels that we’re able to offer are not what schools expect and need,” Mark Strickland, Wake’s chief of facilities and operations, said at last week’s school board facilities committee meeting.
Retired teacher Heidi Sue Ross, who is compiling the list of schools with HVAC issues, said Wake needs to respond soon to the concerns.
“I promise you private companies in the area would not make employees work in a 90-degree building,” Ross said in an interview. “But we go to school in one.”
More early releases ‘inevitable’
Wake has already had to send students home early from seven schools that operated this summer because of HVAC problems, including twice this week at Southeast Raleigh High School.
Ross said conditions were so bad at Southeast Raleigh High that a teacher had to be treated for heat exhaustion.
The prospect of more early releases when traditional calendar schools start “does keep me up at night,” said Nate Slavik, senior director of maintenance and operations.
“We’re going to have some additional early releases,” Slavik told school board members. “We just do. It’s inevitable. We’re going to do everything we can from a maintenance perspective to keep that from happening.”
The decision about sending students home early is made by individual school principals, in consultation with their area superintendent.
Multiple school board members raised concerns about the impact more early releases will have on lost instructional time and on family schedules.
In the days before all Wake schools were air conditioned, it was not uncommon for students to be released early if it was too hot.
High maintenance vacancy rate
The district is responsible for maintaining more than 200 facilities, including 300 chillers and 5,600 pieces of heating and air conditioning equipment.
Half of the 5,800 emergency work orders received in the past 12 months by the maintenance and operations department were for HVAC concerns.. That doesn’t include an additional 2,300 “urgent” work orders sent to the HVAC shop.
But Slavik said they’re dealing with a 40% vacancy rate in the shop. There are seven open HVAC technician positions, including one for the lone chiller technician who retired after more than 30 years of service.
“We don’t have enough staff to do the work to the level that it needs to be done,” Strickland told board members. “Again, seven vacant positions is a huge when, particularly this time of year in the last couple of three weeks, the phone calls, the texts, the emails are coming left and right for problems with HVAC work.”
Wake has increasingly turned to outside vendors to work on its HVAC units. But Slavik said those vendors also are dealing with staffing shortages and delays getting parts.
“While we have very good relationships with our contracted services, we are not their only customers,” Slavik said. “There are times when our vendors are unable to meet our timelines.”
Summer HVAC repairs at schools
During the summer, Wake says 40 schools required general HVAC repairs. It can now take weeks to get some parts and as much as 50 weeks to get a new chiller, Slavik told the board.
“A few of our schools needed repairs that required ordering and replacing of parts,” the district said in a statement. “Some parts require a longer lead time for ordering which can delay repairs. These issues resulted in early releases at seven schools this summer.”
Some of the Wake schools needing HVAC repairs are older campuses such as Carnage Middle School in Raleigh. But school board members questioned why some newer schools already need HVAC repairs.
Slavik said that a hard freeze and power outages over Christmas break damaged several HVAC units. This included Alston Ridge Middle, which opened in Cary in 2019 but has two chillers only operating at half capacity.
Teachers complain about AC issues
It’s been an extremely warm summer, prompting Ross to ask on Facebook how many Wake schools were having HVAC issues. Her posts soon were flooded with dozens of comments and reactions from teachers.
Ross said she was looking for the information because her husband is experienced in HVAC work. Unlike current teachers, Ross said she can speak out because she’s retired.
“So many of my colleagues and so many of my students were being impacted by this,” said Ross, who has been substitute teaching in Wake since her retirement. “Teachers are afraid to speak up because there will be some sort of retaliation.”
The News & Observer contacted some of the teachers who had reached out to Ross. They declined comment, saying they didn’t want to get in trouble with the district.
Ross said she’s received complaints from teachers at 52 of Wake’s 198 schools. But the number rises daily.
She said she has heard horror stories including how it was so hot in one modular classroom that all of an elementary school teacher’s crayons melted into one lump.
Ross doesn’t place all the blame on Wake, saying state lawmakers should provide more funding to schools. But she says Wake could have done more to keep the situation from getting this bad,
“The bottom line is it’s not acceptable,” Ross said. “They need to come up with something. I get they have their list of reasons for why it’s not happening, but there are so many ways that this could have been avoided.”
This story was originally published August 24, 2023 at 2:50 PM with the headline "Wake teachers say school AC units aren’t working. That will mean more early releases.."
