Price tag for cool schools? Millions
14 of 54 city schools fully air-conditioned, 7 partially cooled
It was pretty hot inside Pittsburgh Public Schools this week, forcing the district to send students home early two days in a row.
But district officials say the presumably simple solution of adding air conditioning to the oldest buildings isn’t as simple as it might sound.
Pamela Capretta, chief operations officer for the district, said equipping the schools with air conditioning would cost millions of dollars. That’s per building.
“We’re trying as best we can and if it’s a reasonable cost,” Ms. Capretta said.
Of the district’s 54 schools, 14 are fully air-conditioned and seven are partially air-conditioned, she said. Most of the newer schools or schools that have recently been expanded or renovated have it.
When the district started exploring the cost of installing air conditioning in all of the schools in 2015, the high end of the estimate was about $100 million, Ms. Capretta said. The cost of installing a new cooling system at each school — assuming the building construction allowed for it — could range from $1.5 million to $7 million at the larger high schools. And the process to equip all schools with air conditioning would take more than a decade.
“We couldn’t sustain that on our current revenue sources,” Ms. Capretta said. “We have limited dollars and we like to put most of our money into instructional needs.”
There are window units in some of the schools’ offices, but they aren’t able to return enough fresh air into a classroom full of 30 students, Ms. Capretta said.
For now, the district is adding air conditioning to schools — where it’s financially feasible — as it repairs or replaces the existing ventilation systems in the buildings. The district installed a new air conditioning system at Sunnyside PreK-8 in Stanton Heights this summer, and Ms. Capretta said it will be operating by the time
the hot weather returns at the end of the school year. Air conditioning was installed in Murray Elementary in Mount Oliver when it was renovated two years ago.
“We are trying to do air conditioning,” she said. “Our next biggest air conditioning project is at Oliver Citywide (Academy) and the offices there. We only use a small portion of that school as a school. The rest we use as office space and those people are there all year long.”
Still, she said, the district has heard from a number of parents, especially this week, about sweltering temperatures inside classrooms caused by record high temperatures several days in a row. In her almost 24 years with the city school district, Ms. Capretta said she can’t remember a time when the district had to release students and staff early to stay cool.
A number of Pittsburgharea schools either dismissed students early or canceled classes altogether on Tuesday and Wednesday due to the climbing temperatures over several days. Those schedule changes followed a wave of schools and districts that were forced last week to postpone the start of the school year due to mold and air quality issues they said were the result of all the rain over the summer.
Pittsburgh Public, which started the school year on time on Aug. 24, has more than 50 maintenance staffers working alongside the custodial staff all year round, Ms. Capretta said.
In addition to their work on the planned capital improvement projects at the district’s various schools over the summer, the staff gives each building a thorough cleaning and checks that all the doors and windows are secure. Pools are drained and cleaned, and gymnasium floors are scrubbed. The maintenance team also has an environmental hygienist on staff to make sure tasks such as mold remediation or water removal is done properly.
Ms. Capretta said some buildings had mold issues, but the issues were resolved immediately before students returned to the buildings. A water backup issue at South Hills 6-8 earlier in the summer also was resolved.
“People are in those rooms all the time,” she said. “They’re quite busy this time of year.”