Polk teachers union says air conditioning still broken in hundreds of classrooms

Two weeks into the school year, more than 300 classrooms remain without air conditioning in Polk County Public Schools, the president of the county's teachers union told School Board members Tuesday.

“We still have 309 classrooms that do not have working AC,” according to Polk Education Association president Stephanie Yocum.

Yocum said the issue is not with AFSCME union members working as A/C technicians for the district, but the district’s slow response. She said it only began to address sweltering classroom conditions after the union filed a formal grievance.

“The A/C tech and the maintenance teams that are on the ground working as fast as they can are the real heroes tonight,” Yocum said.

Before the grievance, the union had informally told the district about conditions that would be impacting teaching and learning in classrooms as teachers returned from summer break to plan lessons and train for the start of the school year.

“As soon as teachers came back on August 3rd, our phones were ringing off the hook because A/Cs were down across the district,” she said.

“I'm really mad that this has gotten to this point because we have a good relationship with our district and to feel that we had to go to a formal grievance to get things resolved really does anger me,” Yocum said. “And it wasn't until we filed our formal grievance that all of a sudden overtime was approved for A/C techs, and all of a sudden, they were working on getting contractors and companies to come and help our A/C techs."

Long term, she said she hoped the grievance would change policy and increase the district’s mechanical trade workers “because I don't know if you guys know this, but there are eight perpetual A/C tech vacancies that the district has not been able to fill in years,” she said.

“For a district our size, that is unacceptable,” Yocum said.

Further, in classrooms deemed to be at the appropriate temperature level, there are readings of 79 degrees in those rooms and not the 72 degrees expected for students to be successful learners, she said.

The district did not respond Wednesday to an email requesting the latest figures on the number of classrooms with out air conditioning.

The district had issued a statement on Aug. 17 saying it received 755 work orders for A/C issues and more than 600 of those work orders had been closed out. Of those work orders, 5% were duplicates and nearly half of the maintenance requests were for rooms that had working A/C units.

“But in the extreme heat we’ve been experiencing, A/C systems can struggle to cool rooms more than 15-20 degrees,” the statement said. “For context, A/C issues have made up less than 13% of the total work orders we’ve received over the summer.”

Maintenance crews have been “working diligently to finish all remaining repairs,” they have prioritized rooms without any air conditioning and portable units have been brought into some classrooms, the district said. It said in some cases, teachers and students in classrooms with A/C issues were moved to other areas with working A/C.

The district has added maintenance staff from other trades to assist A/C techs.

“We also have authorized overtime pay for night and weekend work to make fixes as quickly as possible,” the district said. Longer term, the district has contracted with vendors for more extensive work on district heating and cooling systems.

“We also have secured more than $40 million in federal (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund) ESSER funds for various air quality initiatives, of which more than $6 million has been spent to purchase and install more than 500 new A/C systems,” the district statement said.

Other issues the district is facing include labor shortages, supply chain issues and serving one of the fastest growing metropolitan areas in the country, it said. The district added that aging school buildings and inadequate state funding is another factor.

This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Polk teachers union says 309 classrooms still have A/C problems