After students and staff had to endure sweltering heat for the first month of school, action was taken to fix the issues that caused the campus air conditioning to shut down. 

Defective parts in the school’s cooling allowed hot water to infiltrate the AC units. This caused them to abruptly turn off, leaving many classrooms without proper cooling systems.

“This happened much more commonly in the older units at the school,” Assistant Principal Cameron Roehm said. “The cooling towers at the schools, as well as the age of the AC units were the underlying issues that caused this to happen, and so some of the classrooms had intermittent air.”

Due to the discomfort, some teachers had to disrupt their lesson to try and get their students out of the heat.

“I remember one day, I was teaching my first lab with my Baking & Pastry II students. We had all the ovens on, there were 30 kids in there, and it was just unbearably hot,” Culinary teacher Michael Hadobas said. “Back then, I didn’t know if we should be running labs because this could potentially be unsafe for the students.” 

Students and faculty advisers who stayed after school for extracurricular activities and tutoring sessions also had to face the brunt of the heat.

“When I went to TSA for their first meeting, and everyone was packed in there, it was so hot and uncomfortable,” sophomore Renzo Omolon said. ”I didn’t really wanna be there after sitting in the heat for a few minutes.“ 

To combat the classrooms that lacked consistent cooling, swamp coolers and rental air conditioning units have been used as an alternative.

“During that time, administration was communicating with the teachers through emails. It took 3 or 4 days for things to actually get done, so it wasn’t instantaneous, but they gave me a swamp cooler to help with the temperatures,” math teacher Tawanna Ervin  said. “It’s just sitting at the back of my room right now, but it’s really helped a lot.”

Because of their efforts, administration is glad to say that all the classrooms on campus have been properly cooled. 

“A lot of the classrooms I had were really hot. Since no one could really get up and move around, a lot of people in my classes were kinda off task because none of us could focus,” senior Ella Mengistu said. “But now I noticed, well more so in my math class and in the kitchens, that it’s cooled down a lot. None of my classrooms really have issues anymore.”

Both students and staff can be assured that any problems regarding the air conditioning can be quickly resolved.

“If the AC goes out, our building manager can get it turned back on in a relatively short amount of time,” Roehm said. “He’s been able to get the AC units back up and running for the most part, which is a huge shout out to him for all of his hard work.”