EDDYVILLE —
Pulling out the checkbook at a small school district can be painful, but Dean Cook felt like there was no choice but to add air conditioners.
“I’ll tell you, I was worried, really worried,” said Cook, superintendent of the Eddyville-Blakesburg-Fremont school district. “Would we even be able to start school? You know what the summer’s been like. I was thoroughly expecting we’d have more of those 90, 95 degree days.”
School started Wednesday. On Friday, teachers were approaching him, he chuckled, expressing grattitude for his work to get the new air conditioners installed this month.
“I tell them, ‘Don’t thank me. Thank the taxpayers and the [E-B-F] school board.’”
Air conditioning may seem like a minor detail or even a luxury, but he said in some buildings, it can mean the difference between having school or canceling. In fact, as it warmed up at the end of the school year, just three months ago, Cook ended up canceling school a few times for days above 90. This first week of school, high temperatures hit 93 degrees Wednesday and 94 Thursday.
The forecast for Friday was 95.
“When it’s 95 degrees in a classroom, kids can’t think, teachers can’t think, everyone’s miserable. But we tell them they’re supposed to bring their ‘A’ game and have fun.”
Most of the E-B-F district’s buildings have air conditioning. The ones that did not, the school board said, need to at the very least have a/c on the five-year plan. Air conditioning has been under discussion amongst board members for some time, Cook said.
He said he empathizes with districts around the state that have had to skip air conditioning like E-B-F had for so long.
Iowa Department of Education spokesperson Staci Hupp said the agency estimates more than one in 10 schools is not air conditioned.
At E-B-F, there had been several areas cooled by geothermal systems, a money-saving, environmentally friendly technology which manufacturers (and Cook’s staff) say are not meant to provide optimal cooling performance when temperatures pass 95 degrees.
According to a publication by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, geothermal systems pump liquid coolant deep into the ground, where temperatures are more consistent — and comfortable — than in the surface world.
Both use power to cool the air, but instead of an air conditioner sucking in 91 degree outside air and trying to cool it, the geo system uses the 70-degree underground temperature as its starting point. At least, on a normal summer afternoon.
“There were days when [maintenance] told me the return temperature from the geothermal [system] was over 100 degrees,” Cook said. “The truth is, really, I should have put [regular air conditioners] in four, five, six years ago.”
Superintendents and their boards, especially in smaller districts, have decisions to make that are very difficult, and are bound to upset someone, he said. And it is up to them, the state says.
“The Iowa Department of Education doesn’t provide guidance on school air conditioning,” said Hupp in Des Moines. “Our position is that air conditioning for school districts is a local decision.”
Now that Cook suggested and pushed for the expense, he said, Friday was the kind of day that validated his position. He said he’d procrastinated when it came to spending tens of thousands of tax payer dollars on a/c.
“It’s one of those things, do you put on a new roof [on the building], do you buy a school bus or computers for the kids? Or do you put in air conditioning?”
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