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When Vestavia Hills children returned to school last week after sub-freezing temperatures and icy roads kept schools closed for three days, some children found themselves in classrooms where the temperature was 50 degrees, one parent told the school board Monday night.
Parent Mary Ellen Graham respectfully asked school officials why they were prioritizing replacement of lighting systems over the heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems and asked about the timeline for replacing HVAC systems.
Superintendent Todd Freeman acknowledged there are challenges in keeping buildings warm during extreme cold weather.
Building codes require the schools’ air conditioning systems to bring in a certain amount of outside air into the building, Freeman said. On extremely cold days as were experienced last week, that involves introducing 15-degree air into the building that must be warmed, Freeman said.
“It can be difficult in those extreme weather temperatures,” he said. “Yes, there are times when some systems, independent of age, are not able to keep up.”
In such situations, school officials try to bring in supplemental heat to help warm up the buildings, but “it’s not a perfect system,” Freeman said.
He understands parental concerns because he has elementary-age children himself, he said.
All of that said, the school system for a couple of years has had a plan to replace its aging HVAC equipment, Freeman said.
The school system’s five-year capital plan includes $35 million worth of energy management facility improvements that need to be done, including replacement of roofs, energy controls, lighting systems, and heating and air conditioning systems. However, funding for all of those projects has yet to be identified.
Those needs were part of the reason school officials asked Vestavia Hills voters to approve a property tax increase in May of last year, but voters rejected that increase.
Freeman has said he respected the decision of voters and will work with the school board to address needs as they can with the current level of revenues and hope for revenue growth as the city grows.
The school board did receive a grant of almost $5 million from the lieutenant governor’s office and elected to use that money to replace aging lighting systems with new LED lights.
Freeman said that’s because that grant money would not begin to cover the cost of mechanical needs and school officials would have to start picking one school over another to get upgrades first.
Instead, they chose to replace lighting because the lighting upgrades could be done systemwide, and the school system will recoup several hundred thousand dollars in savings with the new lighting system, the superintendent said.
Freeman said he anticipates the Legislature will appropriate some additional money for school system capital needs that will help the situation. But in the meantime, mechanical upgrades will have to be done as money becomes available and will be done in priority order as recommended by the school system’s energy consultant, Schneider Electric, he said.
Some HVAC replacement work already has taken place at Vestavia Hills Elementary East and Vestavia Hills High School, he said.
There is a plan, and “we’re very much ready to put it in play,” the superintendent said. “It’s just a matter of having the revenue to do it.”
