School air conditioning gets council hot under the collar
Frustration boiled over during Thursday’s council budget hearing on the school system budget, as councilmen attempted to find out if air conditioning was ever planned for the recently renovated Ridgely Middle School.
As reported this week in Jay’s Thompson’s story in the Towson Times, parents at the school have complained that the building lacks air conditioning. New energy efficient windows that were installed as part of the renovations don’t open enough to allow for air flow. The result is a building that sometimes gets as hot as 90 degrees or more, according to parents.
The council asked school officials to discuss the issue but became unhappy with what they saw as a lack of a straightforward answer.
You know it’s getting rough when the typically quiet and affable Ken Oliver blurts out an expletive.
“This is a bunch of bulls**t,” Oliver said, interrupting a school official who had offered a long explanation that didn’t appear to answer whether the school was supposed to get air conditioning or not.
That’s when Councilman Kevin Kamenetz stepped in and asked if the air conditioning had ever been planned for the school.
“Talk specifically about Ridgely,” Kamenetz said.
But when the official’s answer started to stray, Kamenetz interjected.
“Was there air conditioning planned for Ridgely Middle? It’s a yes or no answer,” Kamenetz said.
Councilmen Sam Moxley and Bryan McIntire joined in. Moxley and Oliver both asked, in turn, for school officials to “answer the question.”
“Doctor, answer the question here because your employee is not,” Kamenetz finally said to Joe Hairston, Baltimore County Public Schools superintendent.
School officials eventually acknowledged that the building was designed to have air conditioning as an option, but the new windows were meant for a school that was air conditioned.
McIntire said he is constantly asked about the issue by parents in his district.
“If a day goes by that I don’t hear about (Ridgely) I’m going to check the obituaries,” McIntire said.
“Frankly, it makes us look stupid, I don’t know if it’s a problem with the education department or the government side of the county but to prepare a school for air conditioning with windows designed for an air conditioned building and then to not put the air conditioning in makes us look stupid; that we don’t plan ahead.
“Now what are we going to do about Ridgely and when are we going to do it?” McIntire asked.
“We can’t give you an answer right now,” Hairston said, adding, “There’s no easy answer.”
Hairston promised to get back to the council in a month.
“We can sit down and talk rationally about this,” Hairston told McIntire and the council.
Hairston later made it clear that while he was willing to come back in a month to talk to the council about Ridgely Middle School, he wasn’t guaranteeing a complete answer then, either.