School board chairman addresses $600 million HVAC shortfall

The chairman of the Wake County Public School School System gave a blunt assessment Tuesday night of the state of the financial predicament the system has found itself in when it comes to needed maintenance on broken HVAC systems across the county.

“I wish I could better defend it, but it’s clear that these systems have been neglected, and that this neglect has been going on for years,” Chris Heagarty said.

Schools in the Wake Forest and Wendell areas have recently been among those directly affected by HVAC issues. Just this past week an HVAC failure forced a cancellation of classes at Wakefield High School.

Heagarty said that in recent years, a pattern of deferred maintenance has left the county’s schools HVAC systems outdated and in chronic need of repairs. To make matters worse, the district has found it difficult to fill maintenance technician positions.

The lack of in-house personnel has found the district relying too frequently on costly third-party contractors to do the job.

Now, the WCPSS is facing what Heagarty says is a $600 million HVAC repair bill that will take the district 14 years to fully reckon with.

Heagarty likened the situation to a series of credit card payments.

“Imagine if you had gone for two decades, only paying the minimum balance on your credit card, only doing what you could do to get by. And then imagine how that problem compounds itself. That’s similar to where we find ourselves,” he said.

Heagarty said the district places an emphasis on spending money that will directly help students. In doing so, however, he acknowledged that repairs that could have been better addressed in the past are now rearing their heads in a costly way.

“Our values have been our students and our teachers, and it’s hard sometimes to prioritize bricks and mortar and buildings,” he said. “But we see now the impact of those decisions, and I hope that will guide us to where we need to go.”

Additionally, he addressed budgetary issues that have contributed to the problem.

The school board received over $50 million more in additional county funds than was initially allocated in the Wake County budget. That money was needed to fill in holes created by a gap in state funding.

Heagarty acknowledged that it’s difficult to prioritize facilities maintenance when the school board finds itself asking the county for additional funds to pay teachers and bus drivers.

“Those funds were to prioritize our students, academics, our students, mental and physical health, because we did not get the investment we needed for school teachers, for bus drivers, for counselors, social workers, and for school interventionists, among other needs.”

In his remarks to the board and those in attendance, Heagarty said it was imperative to find novel funding sources and reprioritize facilities maintenance going forward so that the school system might dig itself out of its HVAC hole.

“Whether it’s additional state assistance, whether it’s finding new revenue streams out there, whether it’s a reprioritization of our expenses — we’ve got to find a way to address these important needs or this problem is just going to continue to get worse and worse each year.”

The post School board chairman addresses $600 million HVAC shortfall first appeared on Restoration NewsMedia .