Philomath High students were dismissed after lunch this past Tuesday with the school district deciding it was just too darn hot in the building.
The high school has been having issues with the air-conditioning system over the past few weeks and with a forecast showing temperatures reaching 90 on Sept. 24, Superintendent of Schools Susan Halliday felt the best option was to just give the kids the afternoon off and allow staff to work in other buildings to stay cool. Students and personnel had to sweat it out on previous days.
Halliday said the HVAC system at the high school has been a problem for years.
“It gets hard when you’re trying to work with different contractors and you have all of the controls on a server and who can access and how do they access?” Halliday said. “And there’s a lot of proprietary stuff in some of these backgrounds so when something goes south, it’s sometimes difficult on how to navigate to get in and make the appropriate changes.”
The school district’s facilities and maintenance staff, meanwhile, had been doing its best to keep the air flowing.
“We noticed the problem earlier, I mean, the real problem was when things actually shut down because Joey (DiGiovannangelo) and his crew were trying to keep going as much as they could and they were limping some things along,” Halliday said. “When it finally actually quit, that was when we got the contractor and said ‘you’ve got to come out and look at this because we can’t find any other way to fix it.’”
Johnson Controls, the company working with the school district on the issue, was on site the previous Friday and again Tuesday for a fix. One circuit of the system’s chiller had a small leak of refrigerant.
“The one piece of it that broke down was fixed so that leak was repaired and there’s another half of the chiller that’s limping and we’re waiting for the diagnostics and possible actions,” Halliday said Friday afternoon. “But we do have adequate cooling in the high school at this time. We’ve got some things working and there’s air circulation and so we’re back in business.”
By the way, temperatures in Philomath reached the high 80s in the afternoon during classroom hours that day with a high of 91 at around 5 p.m. when activities are typically going on in the building.
Factoring into this discussion are certain sections of the high school where the windows do not open. As DiGiovannangelo reported during a School Board work session on safety earlier this month, back in the early 2010s when the high school construction project was going on, openable windows were not required in certain rooms because of square footage.
“That was the other piece of the puzzle,” Halliday said. “Not only is it hot outside and there’s no air conditioning but in a pocket of the school, there’s no airflow. We did supplement with fans on Friday and Monday to the degree that we could — just box fans in different places until you just start blowing around hot air.”
The district is looking further into the PHS windows issue.
“One of the biggest questions with it is it about ventilation and airflow? Is it about egress? What is it?” Halliday said. “We’re looking into the issues and having conversations.”
Halliday said its bus provider was able to adjust its schedules to accommodate the early release Tuesday. Halliday felt no further action was needed with hot weather moving out of the region by the next day.
“We knew that the weather was going to cool back down again on Wednesday and knew that the repair people were coming on Tuesday and so we were hoping between those two things that it would be resolved,” Halliday said. “We knew by midday on Tuesday that Wednesday and the rest of the week were going to be regular days.”
Halliday said missing the half-day was fine in terms of required instructional hours.
2. Maxtivity receives grant
Philomath-based Maxtivity Arts and Crafts Creative Space will receive a $10,000 grant as part of an effort to strengthen arts education for K-12 students. The money is part of $310,000 that has been set aside for fiscal year 2025 as funding for the Oregon Arts Commission Arts Learning Program.
Arts Learning grants are designed to support projects that provide students a responsive opportunity for learning in and through the arts, foster the exchange of knowledge between artists and educators, and impact the achievement, skills and attitudes of learners.
“Unfortunately, so many schools lack adequate funding for arts education,” Brian Rogers, Arts Commission executive director, said through a news release. “We are grateful that arts organizations are providing well-rounded education through creative and enriching learning experiences for our youth. Arts education inspires further development and creative problem-solving skills that are important for Oregon’s future leaders.”
Applications were evaluated by a review panel, based on project quality and responsiveness, project support and project impact.
Priority for funding was given to projects that primarily impact schools in one or more of the following categories — Title 1 participation, location within a county with more than 16.9% of the population experiencing poverty or location in a rural community.
Title I schools are those that receive federal funding to help students from low-income families.
Maxitivity was awarded the grant “to support the artistic development of students from Title 1 schools in distressed areas through three responsive residencies totaling more than 40 hours. … The goal is to foster creativity, community engagement and arts skill-building.”
According to the press release, the Philomath residencies will involve “large-scale parade puppetry, acrylic painting and a community mural.”
3. Rising recreation cost
It’ll cost you a little more to visit a state park beginning Oct. 15. That’s because the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department is increasing its camping, parking and reservation fees, a move that the agency said is necessary to “keep pace with the rising cost of utilities, operations and maintenance.”
Most of the increases range from $2 to $5, depending on the fee, officials said.
“We know that raising fees by any amount can be challenging for visitors and we don’t make this decision lightly,” OPRD Director Lisa Sumption said through a news release. “We try to keep costs and fees as low as possible to minimize the impact while still fulfilling our commitment to stewardship and recreation.”
The park system has experienced record visitation as well as the impacts of rising costs and inflation.
“Utility costs, for example, have increased by 28% over the last four years, but most fees have remained the same,” OPRD said. “Depending on the fee, the last increase was anywhere from seven to 15 years ago for base fees.”
If you want to read more on this, the news release breaks down the increases and provides additional details.
(Brad Fuqua is publisher/editor of the Philomath News. He can be reached at News@PhilomathNews.com).
