GREENSBORO, N.C. — “Please make sure your child is dressed warmly tomorrow as the building may remain cold.” This is part of a Twitter post from a Guilford County middle school last week.
Just this week, a parent got this message from a Jamestown Middle school teacher, “The children should be dressed very warm and bring a small blanket if needed.”
Parents are asking, what is going on with the heat?
As of right now in our immediate area, Alamance-Burlington, Davie, Rockingham, most of Randolph County Schools have turned the heat on in district schools. Winston-Salem Forsyth County and Stokes Schools told WFMY the heat turns on based on temperature changes.
When WFMY News 2 asked Guilford County schools about the heat, a spokesman responded, “It isn't like your heating system at home where you can just turn it on or off. As we see, in the mornings right now it’s pretty chilly, but in the afternoon we’re in the ’60s and ’70s.”
Many districts still have older boiler systems. There is no flip of a switch for these systems. You physically have to heat or cool the water and that takes hours upon hours. The Assistant Superintended of Operations from Alamance-Burlington Schools explained the boiler system issue in detail.
“You only have three phases; A/C, nothing at all, or heat. Unfortunately in North Carolina, the weather changes very rapidly. To change over from heat to air and back and forth is impossible because you have to let the water cool enough to turn it to air or let it heat enough to turn it into heat, so a lot of times in our state, we'll go to neutral, nothing running,” said Dr. Todd Thorpe.
The GCS district hasn't said when or if they've begun the transition to heat, which can take a week or more to get all the schools online.
This isn’t the first time the heat timing has been an issue. In November of 2019, the heat hadn’t been turned on in some schools as of November 15. Back then, the story was: War of Words Over Chilly Classrooms.
More recently, GCS had issues with hot temperatures and HVAC issues. In an August story WFMY News 2 covered, Guilford County Schools was handling 700 work orders related to HVAC maintenance issues and officials said it could be 10 years before the problem is fully solved.