Raditya Darningtyas
Scriptor
Wylie E Groves HS
1st Place
Division 3, News Writing
Environmental, Health or Science
Even though the doors and windows were closed, junior Natalie Donaghue’s teeth started chattering as a cold draft swept into her government class on March 6. She wrapped a thick coat around her body before putting her gloves back on, gloves she had just taken off when she walked into the building.
“Somebody said that I looked ridiculous for wearing gloves. I don’t want to look dumb like I am going snowboarding or skiing when I’m just trying to concentrate in class, but I had no other choice because I was so cold,” Donaghue said.
While a few students laughed at Donahue, many sympathize with her and admitted that they are often so cold in classes during the winter that they wear multiple layers, including a coat and hat.
Senior Merrill Watzman is one of these students. Watzman not only wears her coat in classes but in the hallways too.
“I have to wear my coat inside the building every single day, and it really bothers me,” Watzman said. “I can’t be inside without my coat because it’s too cold.”
Like Donaghue, junior varsity debater Daniel Oleynik struggles to concentrate in a class or during a debate practice because of the chill inside the building, and, like Watzman, he keeps his coat on between classes.
“It’s hard to concentrate in the class when my body feels like it’s freezing,” Oleynik said. “Some of the hallways are also too cold, so I have to wear my coat not just in class but everywhere inside the building.”
Freshmen Emma Peake feels more frustration about the uneven temperatures in different areas of the building than having to wear her coat inside.
“The halls, the rooms here are just a different temperature depending on what day and where you are, and I hate that it is cold in some rooms while it is really warm in others,” Peake said. “You go from five different temperatures throughout the school. Sometimes the computer labs in media center are cold and sometimes classes in B15 hallway are cold while classes a hallway over are warm. Mr. Duncan’s room is also cold sometimes but not always. It bothers me to do anything when I feel really cold, but I can never guess when or where I’ll be cold.”
Groves building engineer Cary Marakovitz explained why students experience this uneven and often inadequate temperature distribution: an outdated energy management system run by outdated software.
“The system we have now is antiquated and very difficult to keep maintained, to keep it working. We have a central circulating system that uses a glycolysis instead of just water so that the liquid can’t freeze up during winter time. The boilers in the basement heat this, and then various pumps circulate the air throughout the building,” Marakovitz said. “We have a number of ceiling uni-fans to take care of the hallways, but the classrooms each have their own vertical uni-fan. So all of these is controlled by an energy management system on computer and the energy management system gets the input from a center on the wall telling you what the temperature in the room is. There has been talk, however, about upgrading to a new, better system.”
While Marakovitz thought earlier in the year that the upgrade would happen this summer, lack of funding has put the timeline for the upgrade on an indefinite hold. Birmingham Public Schools Energy & Sustainability Coordinator Nicholas Thornton agreed with Markovitz but explained why the district could not fund the upgrade yet.
“The current controls systems is antiquated, and we have a hard time getting parts. This old system is the source of many of the heating and cooling issues at Groves,” Thornton said. “The intent was to complete an upgrade over the summer; however, funding for that project was not approved. Because of the size of this project, funding is partly controlled by the school board and superintendent. Even they have constraints, though, such as declining funding from the state, rising costs for labor, insurance, supplies, and other expenses. All options are being reviewed, but we have not secured a funding source at this time.”
Superintendent Daniel Nerad expanded on the funding obstacles to solve a more general temperature control problem in the district.
“We had planned to propose a new control system for the heating/cooling system this summer for Pierce, Quarton, Groves and Seaholm,” Nerad said. “ Unfortunately, the estimated of cost for these system upgrades was approximately $1.8 million, and we do not now have adequate funding to accomplish this goal within our current General Fund or Building & Site Fund budgets. Therefore, we are reviewing our options at this time and hope to find a more cost effective solution to this issue. Unfortunately, this work will not be completed this summer as originally planned.”
As summer approaches, students, such as Oleynick, worry that their pain in the winter will return in the form of uneven, at times distracting, heat in areas of the building.
“While in the winter it’s always freezing cold in some classrooms and hallways, except near the office, in the summer it can be so hot in some classrooms you just can’t think.” Oleynik said. “It’s hard to concentrate to what the teacher is saying when you are either freezing to death or you are burning up.”
Oleynik claimed the heat in debate room during past summers has negatively impacted his performance.
“The debate room is always way too hot,” Oleynik said. “It’s sweltering. You are sweating, and it’s just so bad we can’t concentrate. We spend more time complaining about the actual temperature in that room than actually working. It’s really annoying.”
Marakovits sympathizes with the students’ frustration and wants them to both better understand the cause of the problem and know that there is a solution that can make the temperature in the building more comfortable.
“This system that we have now dates back to 1985, while the new system we may put in is state of the art. A comparison is like what your computers were like back in 1985 compared to what are the computers like today,” Marakovits said. “So when we do this upgrade, we’re going have much better control over everything, and the computer controls will react faster to changes in temperature.”
Donaghue hopes the district finds money to solve the school’s heating and cooling problem soon.
“The heating and cooling system must be fixed. One bathroom is warm during the winter and another is freezing and this happens on the same day. I can never predict which one will be the freezing one. Worse than that, I never know when a classroom will be freezing, so I pretty much carry my coat with me everywhere,” Donaghue said. “It’s crazy that in the winter, when it’s only supposed to be freezing outside, the classrooms are still cold you have to try to take notes on a lecture without shivering so badly your hands shake.