No air conditioning at Clovis East High as Fresno temperatures approach triple digits

Julianna Morano
·2 min read

UPDATE: Around 6 p.m., the Clovis Unified District office announced the air conditioner had been restored at Clovis East High and Reburn Intermediate.

ORIGINAL STORY: Clovis East staff set up extra fans and passed out water to students Wednesday, a day after the school’s air-conditioning went down amid an early summer heat wave in the central San Joaquin Valley.

Maintenance crews are working “around the clock” to fix the issue, which Clovis Unified spokesperson Kelly Avants said should be solved “no later than (Wednesday) evening or early (Thursday) morning before school.”

In the meantime, the district is monitoring temperatures in classrooms, which could approach 90 degrees as the afternoon heat kicks in, Avants said. Students in classrooms that get too hot will also be diverted to one of the gyms on campus that has functional air-conditioning.

The malfunction comes while temperatures in Fresno and across the Central Valley are climbing. Fresno is forecast to reach a high of 97 degrees Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service in Hanford.

The highs Wednesday and Thursday are 12 to 14 degrees above normal for this time of year.

“Certainly, if there were unsafe conditions, that would be a different story than what we’re dealing with right now,” Avants said, “which is very much a nuisance, but we do have supports in place.”

Clovis East’s outage began after the second of the school’s two HVAC units went down Tuesday.

“Teams worked into the night to repair it, and after rebooting the system late (Tuesday),” she said, “another part failed.”

Maintenance is now working on three different solutions, and it’s “basically a race to see which of the three comes online the fastest,” Avants said.

The school expected to receive a rental unit Wednesday as a backup through the rest of the school year. The team is also working on rewiring the compressor from one unit to the other to help “circumvent the broken part.”

They also continue to try to repair both HVAC units.