Wake County Public School System leaders are looking at consulting with an outside group on a plan that would overhaul the district's approach to facilities. It faces $800 million in deferred maintenance, about a quarter of that for heating, ventilation, and air conditioning.
The school system needs a "major shift" in how it approaches facilities, made only more clear by a school year already plagued by HVAC issues, said Veronica Hill, the district's new chief of facilities and operations.
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Hill, who started in July, announced the plan during the school board's facilities committee meeting Tuesday. Since she started, Hill said the district has had 25-50 critical work orders per day in its 200-school system.
"That number is high," Hill said. "Ultimately, that points to years of maintenance needs that have built up faster than they've been addressed."
About 80% to 90% of those critical work orders are resolved within the day.
"When HVAC breaks, it disrupts learning," Hill said. "The impact is real."
Hill intends to present a plan for making major changes at the school board's retreat in December.
Since the start of the school year in July, WRAL News has received dozens of reports from teachers and parents about air conditioning not functioning properly at numerous schools across the district. In August, WRAL reported that roughly one-third of schools had some identified HVAC issue in their most recent health inspection, including on days when temperatures were mild.
The district hasn't closed any schools early so far this year, though it has done so dozens of times in recent school years.
"We encourage parents, if you believe conditions are beyond what their children can endure, then we do encourage them to pick their children up," Superintendent Robert Taylor said. The district wouldn't keep a school open if it weren't safe, he said.
The district fell behind in facilities maintenance after years of prioritizing new schools --- instead of renovations and maintenance --- and academic programs and employee pay. The district also hasn't added maintenance staff at a rate proportional to the number of new schools it's added over the past decade-plus, and it generally pays its maintenance workers at far lower than the rate of the private sector, resulting in ongoing staffing challenges.
The district has too much ground to gain on improving its facilities to keep doing what it's doing, Hill said.
"Putting out fires is not a long-term maintenance plan," she said. It's too difficult to do both that and plan for the future without some help, she said.
One thing the district is doing differently now is changing the equipment it buys, Taylor said.
Some maintenance has fallen by the wayside because some of the HVAC systems purchased are complex and tougher to work with, he said.
And some maintenance issues have occurred even when equipment is newer because it wasn't properly maintained, Taylor said.
Failures in new school buildings are something Hill should make sure is addressed in the plan the district is working on, said School Board Member Chris Heagarty.
The age isn't always the problem, Hill said. Preventive maintenance can be.
The district is also looking at purchasing extended warranties more often, instead of one-year warranties, Taylor said, so that more equipment can be covered for any replacements.
The district also plans to have some kind of list or dashboard that's easily accessible, where employees and school board members can look up when a school is scheduled for an HVAC upgrade if it's on the list in the next few years, Hill said. But that list could change many times.