LANSDALE — One more of North Penn’s buildings could soon get much cooler.
The district’s facilities and operations committee has voted ahead repairs to the air conditioning units at the district Educational Services Center on Hancock Street.
“The units were installed in 1989, so they are well beyond their life cycle,” said Director of Facilities and Operations Tom Schneider.
“We do preventative maintenance on them, but at some point, a unit that was installed in 1989 will fail eventually. So it’s just something that we’re dealing with, and hopefully we’ll get good, serviceable years out of these units that we’re installing,” he said.
The district’s Educational Services Center is located at the corner of Hancock Street and Church Road in Lansdale, just south of the adjacent Penndale Middle School, and was originally constructed in 1963 as the district’s Hancock Elementary School, then renovated and converted into district offices in the late 1980s, according to MediaNews Group archives and a district facilities study performed in 2018-19.
Air conditioning across the district has been an ongoing topic of discussions since 2016, when parents first raised concerns about high temperatures inside several elementary schools, and the district has since approved AC upgrades at Gwyn Nor and Oak Park elementaries in 2017, a major renovation of Knapp Elementary to add air conditioning that’s nearing completion now, and a larger study of North Penn High School that board members have said could impact similar upgrades to air conditioning at the three district middle schools.
The 2019 facilities study states that the ESC’s HVAC system “was installed nearly entirely in 1989, and has exceeded its useful life. The facility is fully heated, cooled and ventilated; however, the heating and cooling systems are both 100 percent electric and the district has reported electrical bills in excess of $500,000. The air handling units are located in mechanical mezzanines and are difficult to service,” while noting those units cover roughly 31,600 square feet and estimating a cost of $1 million to replace them.
DAN SOKIL — DIGITAL FIRST MEDIA
Fifty years of North Penn School District history are depicted in a mural by local artist Joseph Low at the entrance to the district’s Educational Services Center, 401 E. Hancock St. in Lansdale, that was unveiled in 2016 to mark the district’s 50th birthday.
During the school board facilities and operations committee meeting on Sept. 27, Schneider gave an update on the latest, including recent failures of that equipment that prompted staff to seek quotes for repairs.
“Some months ago, the board gave us permission to advertise for the replacement of the boardroom AC units. That went out to some state contractors for pricing, but in the interim, over the summertime, we lost three additional AC units, compressors, and some other controls of AC units in the ESC,” Schneider said.
“Because all of this work had to be done, we packaged everything together, and went out to state contractors that could bid on this work, without the process of public bidding. It’s permissible to do this through the COSTARS program,” he said.
Board member Juliane Ramic asked for specifics on how often the building is currently used, and Superintendent Todd Bauer said quite often, particularly in warm weather.
“The ESC is utilized just as much in the summer as it is during the year. The only change, I would say, is that we are not typically open on Fridays. But that’s similar to all the other buildings — we do limit the hours in the summer, to try to contain some costs pertaining to energy,” he said.
“The air conditioning not working, in July and August in particular, is challenging. And it was also one of the reasons we couldn’t have school board meetings there,” Bauer said.
Schneider added that the AC for the main public meeting room failed in spring 2022, and Bauer said “we were waiting quite a long time to get somebody to respond to our request for this work.” Schneider gave the specifics: three responses were received from qualified state vendors, with prices ranging as high as just below $200,000, and the lowest bidder was Johnson Controls Inc. for a quoted price of just over $71,000.
“The building is difficult. It’s not a simple replacement, like it would be with a home air conditioning system. It is a struggle to keep them operational,” Schneider said.
Facilities committee chairwoman Cathy Wesley added that she’s aware that air conditioning has remained a topic of discussion, particularly at the middle schools, where temperatures in the 90s at the start of school this past August prompted another round of questions about AC upgrades there.
“I know there is sensitivity — I’m going to be transparent — regarding air conditioning, and I appreciate our fellow committee members discussing this,” she said. “These units are very old units, there is nothing new being added. I think that’s important to note.”
North Penn’s facilities and operations committee next meets at 7 p.m. on Oct. 26 online and the full board next meets at 7 p.m. on Oct. 11 at the district Educational Services Center, 401 E. Hancock Street; for more information visit www.NPenn.org.
