Numerous Baltimore City schools still without air conditioning

By Tim Tooten

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    BALTIMORE, Maryland (WBAL) — We could approach 90 degrees on Friday, and there are still Baltimore City schools without air conditioning.

School officials are proud that they’ve gone from 75 to about a dozen buildings without air conditioning. But they admit just one hot school is one too many.

When classroom temperatures rise above 85 degrees, students must be sent home for the day, and that seems to happen every year around this time.

“We are doing our best to try and get through this and we just hope everybody has patience with us,” said Cyndi Smith, Baltimore City Schools executive director for Planning, Design and Facilities.

The school system has to maintain 160 buildings. All but 13 now have air conditioning, and there are plans to eventually install AC in the rest.

“Those 13 all have a plan and funding associated with them. It’s just a matter of some of them are related to major renovation projects,” Smith said.

Some city parents have been keeping a close watch on the progress.

“When you hear the numbers, they’re improving,” said Mensa Prescott-Jones. “It’s about time. It’s unfortunate that it took the pandemic. Now we have schools that have air conditioning and children can breathe and think.”

In recent years, the district has installed an HVAC monitoring system to keep track of building temperatures year-round. The dashboard detects problems and helps dispatch maintenance crews to problem school sites.

Beyond the end of this school year, administrators have already started to turn their attention toward the summer, where they’re expecting as many as 22,000 students to occupy buildings.

There is also a long-range plan to renovate four Baltimore City high schools. They also happen to be schools in need of AC.

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