Wenatchee Schools Facing Widespread HVAC Issues
Students at Orchard Middle School in Wenatchee are no longer feeling the heat after the installation of several fixes to the building's HVAC system.
On July 8, Orchard's cooling units failed while students were on summer break, but the replacement parts needed for repairs did not arrive in time to have the air conditioning up and running when kids went back to class last month.
Wenatchee School District (WSD) Superintendent Kory Kalahar says acquiring components for broken or damaged infrastructure at the District's schools is an ongoing issue.
"We have such old and aging equipment, systems, and controls in our buildings that it has really become challenging to find parts. We're constantly either fabricating our own parts or the ones we order aren't available or are on backorder. These things don't just don't sit on the shelves somewhere. So we really are struggling with that across the board at all of our buildings except for Washington and Lincoln (Elementary School) at this point."
Amid temperatures that reached the 90s and triple digits during the first week-and-a-half of the new school year, the District released students at Orchard three hours early on August 30, and Sept. 3-4 prior to applying a solid stopgap to its HVAC problems.
District officials reached out to a company in Kent that provides refrigeration for large produce warehouses and arranged to have them retrofit Orchard's systems with a temporary fix that will keep its classrooms cool until the parts required for permanent repairs finally arrive and can be installed.
Orchard's HVAC woes are only one of several the District has experienced in recent months.
In late June, the cooling system at Mission View Elementary went down, forcing students in the District's Migrant Summer School program to move to Lincoln Elementary.
The WSD's Valley Academy also had a portion of its HVAC units fail recently, and there are currently several spaces at Wenatchee High School that are not being properly air conditioned due to a broken compressor.
Despite a current $10 million budget shortfall, Kalahar says the District always keeps funding on hand for emergency repairs to critical systems at its buildings, but he'd like to see a longer-term solution to the continuing breakdowns.
"We have a rainy day fund for emergencies, but what we would really like is to have a longitudinal plan for how we're going to address some of these things over time. So we do have a facilities committee that is currently meeting to build our next Wenatchee School District ten-year plan and what that looks like, as well as what we need to do in asking the voters in the District for some help as well."
Kalahar says he's hoping the current forecast for milder weather will continue long enough to allow the District not to tax the HVAC systems at any of its schools, but that the safety and comfort of its students are always the first priority.