Emanuel Demands Air Conditioning In All CPS Schools In Five Years
By Chuck Sudo in News on Apr 22, 2014 8:30PM
Sun-Times columnist Michael Sneed led her Tuesday column with an interesting item. Mayor Rahm Emanuel is demanding Chicago Public Schools install air conditioning in every school and classroom that needs it within the next five years.
That’s just tempting fate and a recipe for disaster if left in the hands of CPS, if history is an indicator.
Sneed notes that of the 530 buildings in the school district, 162 have partial air conditioning while 44 have none at all—a combined 44.3 percent of school buildings. It’s also sad that this is an issue at all on top of improving grades, test scores and graduation rates at CPS.
Emanuel’s edict had CPS at a loss to explain how they’re going to make that happen. CPS’ Draft Educational Facilities Master Plan, released last year, estimated it would cost $1.36 billion to install full air conditioning units in the schools that lacked them, “less if we deploy window units.” CPS spokesman Joel Hood told the Sun-Times Emanuel’s air conditioning mandate is part of the school district’s capital budget and the cost is being finalized and will be made public in a few weeks.
While air conditioning is certainly a necessity (one of many at CPS), coming up with the cash will be especially hard for a school district with a $1 billion budget deficit and whose 2013-14 budget dipped into reserve funds, maximized property tax levies, broke piggy banks and possibly wrote post-dated checks to balance. Moreover, few would trust CPS administrators with finding the cheapest option available to fulfill Emanuel’s demand. It was only last month when the district asked for an extra $5 million in its furniture budget for its upcoming move to a new central office and eight satellite offices. We would rather let some of CPS’ failing students have a crack at balancing the district’s budget than the administrators that helped encourage the current morass.
CPS doesn’t have the best track record keeping tabs on installing air conditioning in schools, either. Air conditioning units were installed at 50 welcoming schools after the landmark school closings last year, but many of the units either failed or led to brownouts of neighborhood power grids because CPS didn’t mention to ComEd they were installing the air conditioning. CPS spokeswoman Becky Carroll couldn’t tell media then how many schools lacked air conditioning because “we don't actually have the numbers.”
This is the very definition of schadenfreude, readers.