80 Degrees At School? Time To Go Home

After high heat and broken air conditioning systems sent students home early two days in a row last week, New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) Superintendent Madeline Negrón has established an ​“extreme temperature protocol” that considers closing school buildings if classrooms get above 80 degrees.

Next up, she plans to put together a long-awaited district preventative maintenance program. 

Negrón provided the Board of Education and public with that update on Monday during the latest regular biweekly school board meeting, held in person at Barack Obama School on Farnham Avenue and online via Zoom. 

She presented that plan less than a week after the district closed all city schools early two days in a row thanks to extreme heat and busted air conditioning systems, sending students home early and prompting some parents to scramble to pick up their kids in the middle of the workday.

During the meeting, Negrón recapped last week’s unexpected HVAC failures. ​“New Haven was one of a number of schools districts in the state that dismissed early last week due to extreme heat. Surrounding districts included Branford, Bridgeport, Danbury Middletown, Milford, New Britain, North Haven, Stamford, Stratford, Trumbull, and West Haven,” Negrón said. 

She explained that the district’s school buildings, though equipped with air conditioning, are not equipped to handle extreme heat like that that occurred last week. 

“As air conditioning systems are strained we may see interior temperatures rise above 80 degrees,” Negrón said.

As a result, Negrón said, ​“the district has now created an extreme temperature protocol that includes consideration of school closures, or early dismissals, or delayed openings when interior temperatures rise above 80 degrees.” 

When asked why the district picked 80 degrees as the threshold for when to potentially close schools early, schools spokesperson Justin Harmon said via email, ​“The 80 degree threshold was cited by a number of Connecticut districts in making decisions about early dismissals last week.”

Negrón added during Monday’s meeting that stressed HVAC systems are more prone to mechanical failures, especially when older, ​“and ours are very old.”

Last week several school buildings experienced ​“a number of unexpected mechanical and building management system failures,” said Negrón. 

“Most of the repairs are relatively minor but have significant impact on building operation. As an example, take John C Daniels school [in the Hill], where there was an unexpected failure of a valve that brought down the entire air conditioning system. The part had to be overnighted and students needed to be relocated to Hillhouse for a day while the part was installed,” Negrón explained. 

She added that the district’s facilities management team is made up of three staffers. That team was not able to manage the volume of repairs needed during the school day and therefore the district decided to dismiss students early last Wednesday and Thursday. 

“We all know that our schools are aging. We also know that over time New Haven has lacked the funding to perform all the maintenance that our systems have needed,” Negrón said. 

Negrón shared about the financial expenditures by the district and its increased investment in building maintenance and repair over the past few years. This was done by repurposing capitol dollars and dedicating federal ESSER funding to HVAC expenditures, she said. 

In 2020, the district spent $1,257,470 on HVAC repairs and improvements, she said. This investment then grew to $1,665,816 in 2021. In 2022 it increased again to $1,824,380 and in 2023 it expended $3,823,616. So far for this school year, the district has spent $581,000 on HVAC related repairs.

Negrón emphasized that ​“we are not just sitting on the problems.” 

Over the period from September to June last school year NHPS installed or repaired chillers in six schools and two are scheduled this month. ​“Four more are or will be out for bid in the next week,” she said. 

Also during this period eight chiller pumps were repaired at five schools. Four hot water heaters and two heating boilers were also replaced at the district’s larger schools. 

A new water tower was also installed at Hillhouse and extensive work was done on school electrical systems, fire alarm systems, elevators, exterior doors, interior locks, roofs, and pools across the district, Negrón reported. 

“Contrary to our popular narrative what we fix stayed fixed, which is not to say that new problems haven’t arisen, sometimes even within the same system. So the work is ongoing and again I want to reiterate we are responding as quickly as human and capital resources will allow us to do so,” Negrón said. 

Negrón’s goal is to next establish a preventative maintenance program for the schools. 

“There is no question that as a district we will need to make increasing investments in our facilities in the year ahead,” Negrón said. ​“We are going to leverage any ESSER funds that we still have. We’re going to have to leverage state grant funding to replace the aging infrastructure. We will need to complete and fully fund a preventative maintenance program.” 

The district is doing a study to create a comprehensive plan to quantify the necessary investments across schools. 

“We can’t think that we’re gonna just repair and then not have a plan on how we’re gonna maintain the work that we do because if we continue to make that mistake we’re going to continue to have the issues that we have for years to come,” she concluded. 

"We Have A Delayed Maintenance Problem"

Board member Darnell Goldson commended the superintendent on Monday for making the right decision to dismiss students early last week. However he raised concerns that the district’s systems operation team can’t ​“get its act together” because for years it’s struggled to be proactive about building maintenance. 

“Every summer we have HVAC cooling problems. Every summer our schools have these problems and somehow we just can’t seem to get on top of it,” Goldson said. 

He suggested the district apply for state grant funding for HVAC system improvements. 

“We did a whole study on all of our schools and their systems during Covid, at the assistance of this board, and that study resulted in two of our schools being closed down because of their inadequate systems. So at the very least we should have been applying for money for those systems, for those schools during this application process,” Goldson said. 

On that issue of state grants, in a Sep. 6 email to the Independent, schools spokesperson Justin Harmon explained: ​“One fact that you should understand regarding state grants. They are for schools that are unairconditioned or where the entire system is being replaced. Our schools are airconditioned. In a couple cases where we have had to replace entire HVAC systems, we have used ESSER funding. If we were to have gone to the state, those grants are reimbursement grants, meaning we would have had to front the funding, which we could not have done.”

Board secretary Edward Joyner added on Monday, ​“We’re backed up in terms of the cumulative effects of not having a preventive maintenance program.” 

“I’m very hopeful that in the future because she [Negrón] has a solid process that it will, one, let us know how much things cost, but also hold people in the system accountable for their role in getting this done properly,” Joyner concluded. 

He requested a board update on why the district did not apply for state HVAC funding. 

Board Vice President Matt Wilcox added that the Board’s Citywide School Building and Stewardship Committee receives monthly reports on maintenance projects happening across the district and while much work is reactive, he said, staff are ​“reacting to problems while also proactively doing the planning work.” 

Similar to ideas raised last week by teacher union president Leslie Blatteau in response to the heat-caused early dismissals, Wilcox suggested in the superintendent’s planning of a preventative maintenance program that the district show the true need of people and resources by defining its gaps as it did with staffing.