The room at the Indian Mills Memorial School was appropriately warm and stuffy with fans blowing when the topic of high temperatures and climate-controlled buildings was brought up at the June 17 Shamong Board of Education meeting.
Temperatures recently rose so high that Superintendent Christine Vespe made the decision to move school from a full-day schedule to half-day schedule for the days of June 18–20.
Vespe spoke about how the safety of students and staff members was the motivating factor in her decision.
“For their safety, and the safety of my staff, I definitely had to make the call for half days,” Vespe said. “While I’m sorry that it does inconvenience, more of an inconvenience would be a child getting hurt or a staff member getting hurt because of the heat. All those things play into it.”
Vespe also said the heat made it difficult for the teachers to successfully perform their jobs.
“I decided today in collaboration with the board president these rooms were stifling hot today, dangerously hot for people to be in, for our students, for our staff,” Vespe. “You feel it tonight; it was hotter than that today. You can’t — it’s almost impossible to teach in there and expect children to behave.
Parent Kathleen Green was the first to bring up the topic of the high temperatures and the move to half days during the public comment portion of the meeting. She questioned why the district didn’t use spring break to make up snow days like other surrounding districts.
“A lot of schools take their snow days off of spring break, and I really don’t understand why our district took the days until the end of June when we know it’s really, really, really hot and the schools are not air conditioned,” Green said.
Vespe said the district calendar and placement of makeup days are approved by the board in the spring of the prior school year, so the decision to have school this far into June was made before this year’s harsh winter caused so many snow days.
“They always historically here have added on to the end of the year, so the snow days were already built in. It wasn’t something that was decided this April for this year. Those days were already built in to carry us out to June 25. All we added really for snow days was one day to June 26. The kids already had to June 25.”
Green asked how parents could be surveyed on their feelings about making up days during spring break, and Vespe said she would look into the procedure, although it would not be an easy process.
Green then brought up the possibility of installing air conditioning for the schools.
“What do we do about the air conditioning?” Green asked. “How do we get that back on the ballot? I don’t remember how long ago it was…what can we do about that?”
Vespe said air conditioning and climate control in buildings would come from Regular Operating District, or ROD, grants through the state, and then the district would need to match those funds. The process would be decided by a referendum that would go out to taxpayers in the township.
The board is looking into the process for the next school year.
“There are a few ROD grants, maybe eight or nine, that are there that I did receive approval for that I applied for this year and one was for climate control and airflow control, so that is something that will be brought up in about September,” Vespe said.
