Update: Tuesday 11:37 a.m. A maintenance crew has repaired a broken heating system at Edgewood School, and the heat is back on in the building, schools spokesperson Justin Harmon reported Tuesday morning.
“The first of the two pumps has been repaired and reinstalled,” Harmon told the Independent.
A previous version of this story follows:
The city’s public school district has advised Edgewood School students to bundle up, now that they’ve returned to a building that still has no heat.
New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) sent that text message advisory to Edgewood School families on Sunday.
The message said that school would be back in session at 737 Edgewood Ave. on Monday, after students were temporarily displaced to Upper Westville’s Davis Street School on Friday due to cold weather and a still-broken heating system on Edgewood.
“Please wear layers,” Sunday’s text message read. “They will keep working on the heat and will send out info with updates.”
On Friday, Edgewood’s 400 students and nearly 50 staffers had to relocate because their home school building was too cold. NHPS spokesperson Justin Harmon confirmed that the K‑8 magnet school students and staff returned to their school building on Monday amid warmer weather.
The Friday displacement came after the Board of Education approved a purchase order on Nov. 12 for the firm Tucker Mechanical to repair Edgewood’s two heat exchangers, at a total cost of $53,478. According to the purchase order contract, the heat exchangers leaked when in use.
While that work has since been completed, according to Harmon, Edgewood still is dealing with two failed heating loop pumps. “The repairs to the heat pumps are in process,” Harmon said. “The expectation is that they will be completed this week. Once repaired and installed, heat can be restored.” He said he does not not know the price for the repairs underway at Edgewood.
He added that there’s still more in need of fixing at Edgewood’s building in addition to the heat pumps. “There is a secondary and more expensive leaking issue with the boilers that will need to be addressed soon thereafter,” Harmon said.
Harmon noted that replacing Edgewood’s entire HVAC system would cost around $1.7 million.
All of this comes as schools across the district, including at Wilbur Cross, have struggled with myriad building maintenance issues amid what the superintendent has recognized as a citywide problem.