BOULDER – Tonight, the Boulder Valley Board of Education voted unanimously to proceed with a strategic operational plan to improve the heat mitigation capacity of all of the Boulder Valley School District’s (BVSD) 51 school buildings and to launch a comprehensive parent and staff communications plan designed to inform parents and guardians how best to lessen the impacts of heat in BVSD’s non air conditioned classrooms. The school board, which had previously voted to separate the heat mitigation portion of the proposal from the proposed amended 2012-2013 school calendar, then voted 4-2 (one absent) against amending next school year’s calendar.
What the school board approved unanimously:
Operational Heat Mitigation Action Plan
To prepare for cooling season, Maintenance staff will undertake an action plan to ensure HVAC systems are working properly in all buildings which will include:
- Performance checks will be conducted on the fans, motors, and dampers.
- Maintenance including cleaning coils, checking/changing belts and filters and greasing/oiling parts will be performed.
- Technicians will evaluate and fine tune the system programming to ensure controls are set up consistently and programmed correctly for all District school buildings.
These tasks should be performed annually and would increase the efficiency and effectiveness of our systems. Budget cuts in the last few years have reduced Maintenance staff and the department’s ability to perform routine system maintenance. It will be necessary to augment maintenance staff with temporary personnel to complete all work during summer break. There are surplus funds available through the Bond Program which could be used to fund the additional staff.
In addition, we will investigate the cost to install reflective film on appropriate windows in school buildings. If the budget allows, the film will be installed prior to the start of school next year.
These strategies should help our existing systems run more efficiently and effectively. However, even when performing optimally, these systems will not provide all the cooling necessary in non-air conditioned spaces during the typical hot days and warm nights of August.
Student/Parent Heat Mitigation Communications
A communication plan will be initiated and communicated to BVSD families to better prepare students to deal with warm conditions. Some examples of heat mitigation strategies will include but not be limited to encouraging students to wear lightweight clothing if possible, reminding them to remain hydrated even when they might not feel thirsty, and limiting high exertion activities whenever possible during high temperatures, etc.
Parents will be advised that certain classroom operating procedures will be suggested to decrease negative effects of warm weather on learning. Some examples of this type of intervention could include allowing students to sit on the floor where the air is cooler, provide water coolers on the playground, and planning indoor activities as opposed to going outside for recess or physical education.
What the school board rejected 4-2:
2012-13 Calendar Revisions
The revised calendar, which complied with the calendar principles the school board had approved in 2010 and would have allowed the school year to begin four days later. Listed below are the changes that would have been made to the 2012-13 calendar:
- All of the professional development days, once sprinkled throughout the calendar, would have been placed before school began for students.
- The day set aside for elementary assessments would have been deleted since many schools now complete the assessments during the regular school days.
- The first day that teachers came back would have been defined as a work day, although any day that week could have been counted as meeting the requirement if the teacher so desired.
- The teacher exchange day for parent-teacher conferences in the spring originally scheduled for the Monday after spring break would have been moved to the end of the school year, May 29, 2013.
BVSD Superintendent Bruce Messinger stated that the board was clear in its majority concern that heat mitigation strategies should be allowed to work in the 2012-2013 school year without changing the previously approved calendar for next year. He also acknowledged and agreed with the board’s consensus that the next BVSD calendar committee, which will meet in the winter of next school year to plan the 2013-2014 and 2014-2015 BVSD calendars, should strongly engage all district stakeholders in a re-examination of the district’s current guiding principles for calendar setting. Finally, Dr. Messinger noted that he and the board had been moved by the concerns of many district teachers who expressed strong disagreement with the proposed rescheduling of all professional development days to the front of the 2012-2013 calendar in order to start classes a few days later in August 2012.