POLK COUNTY, Fla. — The Polk Education Association wants parents and community members to show up to Tuesday’s school board meeting and voice their concerns over ongoing air conditioning issues in schools.
“Our school board elected officials need to hear about what we’re asking for and what conditions are really like,” said Stephanie Yocum, President of the Polk Education Association.
This comes after last Friday’s Class Action Grievance meeting, where the Polk Education Association and the school district met to try and come up with a solution.
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“Our class action grievance is two-fold. We have to maintain and keep pressure on our district to continue fixing AC units that are broken and get those done in immediate fashion,” said Yocum.
“And we’re calling for policies and procedures to change that this doesn’t continue to happen and be a system issue,” she added.
The union said there are about 61 schools dealing with some kind of AC issue.
“I don’t necessarily think it's derelict on the school district, but there’s a lot of compounding issues that should’ve been addressed and planned going into the summer that could’ve alleviated a lot of this,” said Yocum.
It’s different at every school—at some, it might be the cafeteria that isn’t cooling properly or a few classrooms and hallways; at others, it’s more.
“There are some that have complete wings that are without air right now because of the way these units operate,” said Yocum.
The district has contracted outside crews and approved overtime for night and weekend work to get this fixed as soon as possible.
“We purchased over 500 portable AC systems to dispatch. Those will be dispatched here in the first week of September. We are using all available contractors that we have,” said Jason Pitts, PCPS Deputy Superintendent Chief of Staff.
Last Friday’s meeting was not open to the public, but Yocum told ABC Action News that the district provided lots of data and should give the group a timeline this week for when the remaining issues will be repaired.
“The majority of schools are over 30 years old, and before 1970, we weren’t even putting air conditioners into schools, so it’s going to be a long process, unfortunately,” said Pitts.
In the meantime, the teacher’s union is calling on the community to speak to leaders at Tuesday’s school board meeting during public comment.
“We just — we need our elected board to hear about how teaching and learning conditions really are at these school sites, so we’re asking our teachers and staff and our community to show up on Tuesday to talk about these very critical, these very critical issues,” said Yocum.
The meeting begins at 5 p.m.
