{"id":35018,"date":"2023-08-25T15:46:42","date_gmt":"2023-08-25T19:46:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=35018"},"modified":"2023-08-25T15:46:46","modified_gmt":"2023-08-25T19:46:46","slug":"polk-teachers-union-says-air-conditioning-was-still-broken-in-309-classrooms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2023\/08\/25\/polk-teachers-union-says-air-conditioning-was-still-broken-in-309-classrooms\/","title":{"rendered":"Polk Teachers Union says air conditioning was still broken in 309 classrooms"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Two weeks into the school year, 309 classrooms remain without air conditioning in Polk County Public Schools, the president of the county’s teachers union told School Board members Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Polk Education Association President Stephanie Yocum.\u00a0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe still have 309 classrooms that do not have working AC,\u201d according to Polk Education Association president Stephanie Yocum. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yocum said the issue is not with AFSCME union members working as A\/C technicians for the district, but the district\u2019s slow response. She said it only began to address sweltering classroom conditions after the union filed a formal grievance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe A\/C tech and the maintenance teams that are on the ground working as fast as they can are the real heroes tonight,\u201d Yocum said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs soon as teachers came back on August 3rd, our phones were ringing off the hook because A\/Cs were down across the district,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI’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,\u201d Yocum said. \u201cAnd 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.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Long term, she said she hoped the grievance would change policy and increase the district\u2019s mechanical trade workers \u201cbecause 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,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cFor a district our size, that is unacceptable,\u201d Yocum said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The district did not respond Wednesday to an email requesting the latest figures on the number of classrooms without air conditioning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The district had issued a statement<\/a> 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.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut in the extreme heat we\u2019ve been experiencing, A\/C systems can struggle to cool rooms more than 15-20 degrees,\u201d the statement said. \u201cFor context, A\/C issues have made up less than 13% of the total work orders we\u2019ve received over the summer.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maintenance crews have been \u201cworking diligently to finish all remaining repairs,\u201d 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.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The district has added maintenance staff from other trades to assist A\/C techs.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe also have authorized overtime pay for night and weekend work to make fixes as quickly as possible,\u201d the district said. Longer term, the district has contracted with vendors for more extensive work on district heating and cooling systems. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe 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,\u201d the district statement said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two weeks into the school year, 309 classrooms remain without air conditioning in Polk County Public Schools, the president of the county’s teachers union told School Board members Tuesday. \u201cWe… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35019,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[14],"tags":[5782],"class_list":["post-35018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-polk-teachers-union-says-air-conditioning-was-still-broken-in-309-classrooms"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35018\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}