Air conditioning issues at Polk County schools leads to class action grievance as classes begin amid heat wave
BARTOW, Fla. - Polk County Public Schools are gearing up to head back to the classroom on Friday, but educators are raising concerns about ongoing air conditioning issues.
Amid heat advisories around Florida, the Polk Education Association filed a class action grievance against the school district over air conditioning outages and issues at different schools throughout the district.
"The PCPS violated section 6.6-2 of the teacher CBA by unilaterally changing temperatures throughout the district, resulting in excessively hot schools and classrooms which infringe on teachers’ duty to teach and a students’ right to learn," the grievance read.
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Read the full Class Action Grievance Below:
PEA President Stephanie Yocum said teachers or staff at more than a dozen schools have reported issues with air conditioning in their specific classrooms. The affected schools listed in the grievance include North Lakeland Elementary School, Cambridge, Lake Gibson Middle School, Spessard Holland Elementary School, Davenport School of the Arts, Horizon Elementary School, George Jenkins, Sandhill Elementary School, Alturus Elementary School, Traviss and Bartow Middle School.
On Thursday, Yocum said she received more reports of issues from teachers and staff at additional schools.
The school district says it always gets an influx of work orders for air conditioning repairs when teachers first come back to their classrooms to get ready for the school year.
But, Yocum says a lot of the air conditioning issues have been going on since the middle of last school year.
"It is unacceptable to have children come into a building that they cannot learn in it and teachers can't work in," Yocum said.
The extremely high temperatures have on exacerbated conditions.
"We have not seen it to this magnitude, but knowing that we've had, you know, a hotter summer, they should have been stockpiling a lot of these parts so that we're not waiting until the issue is happening to order parts and not have them," Yocum said.
In response to the complaints, the district said contracted vendors are helping install new A/C units and duct work.
"All available portable A/C systems are being deployed from our inventory and will be used first in critical areas, such as portables and interior classrooms," a PCPS spokesman said.
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Yocum says these issues should’ve been taken care of in the spring and at the beginning of the summer.
"Because we can't adequately do what we're supposed to do in our jobs if the learning environment is not conducive to that," she said.
The school district said staff will also be paid overtime to handle work orders, including on nights and weekends. A spokesman said extra teams of HVAC and maintenance techs are being deployed to schools to assess and prioritize work orders.
"Approximately $6 million has been spent to purchase more than 500 new A/C units. Installation is taking place as soon as possible," a PCPS spokesman said. "Students in classrooms without working A/C will be relocated to other areas on campus until fixes are made."
Yocum says there should’ve been an emergency plan in place beforehand.
"While it's unbearable to be working in those kind of conditions, it is unconscionable to expect children to be in those areas when there's 20, 30, sometimes 40 students in a class right now," she said.
On Thursday, the school district was not able to report how many work order have been placed since teachers and staff returned to school, or how many schools were impacted.
The PEA is requesting that the schools named in the grievance have their HVAC set at a minimum of 68 degrees, that any damaged air conditioning unit be repaired immediately and that alternative cooling equipment is provided at no cost to teachers and staff.