By JAN LARSON McLAUGHLIN
BG Independent News
Bowling Green City School students will no longer swelter in their classrooms when they start back to school next month. And unlike the start of school last year, the district won’t have to delay opening by a week due to extreme heat.
If work continues as planned, all of the district’s buildings will have air conditioning by the middle of August.
The Board of Education heard an update Tuesday evening on the air conditioning project from representatives of Howey Fanning, the engineering firm handling the project.
The mini-split systems will be installed and ready to go in the high school, plus Conneaut and Kenwood elementaries by the time school starts. The middle school and Crim Elementary already have air conditioning.
The cooling project includes 167 mini-split systems and six rooftop units, which will supply air conditioning to more than 260,000 square feet of school buildings.
District officials for years have discussed ways to cool the older buildings – with an estimated price tag of $4 million. During the hotter times at the beginning and end of the school years, teachers were often drenched with sweat and the students were drowsy from the heat.
The temperatures – which have been measured over 100 degrees in some classrooms – made it difficult for even the most dedicated students to stay focused in class. The sauna-like temperatures didn’t make for a good learning – or teaching – environment.
Then the district received $2.5 million in Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds to pay for the project with the balance coming from the capital improvement fund.
The district got more good news in January, when the bid for air conditioning the three school buildings came in almost $700,000 lower than the estimated $4 million. The board accepted a bid of $3,308,700 from Earl Mechanical Services to install the mini-split air conditioning systems in the schools.
This week, the board learned that change orders for the project would cost an additional $216,182.
Tim Lehman, from Howey Fanning, explained the additional work will include modifications necessary to comply with code requirements, the addition of bipolar ionization that was omitted from the initial design, and additional mini-split units at all three schools.
“We’re not pleased with that number,” Lehman said. But he pointed out that the project was still below the original estimate – “which is great in this day and age,” he said.
Bowling Green’s timing on the project worked in the district’s favor, Lehman said. Similar projects bid later than Bowling Green’s are seeing double the costs and major delivery delays, he said.
