CPS: Emanuel's Air Conditioning Mandate Will Cost $100 Million
By Chuck Sudo in News on Apr 23, 2014 10:00PM
Well that was fast. Chicago Public Schools estimates it will cost $100 million to install air conditioning in the 44.3 percent of school buildings that need it, per an edict by Mayor Rahm Emanuel first reported by Sun-Times columnist Michael Sneed Tuesday.
CPS spokesman Joel Hood called Emanuel’s mandate “a health and safety issue as far as we’re concerned” but wouldn’t say when the installations would begin or what schools would be first in line. CPS spent $18.7 million for 2,400 window units for the schools designated to receive students displaced from their neighborhood schools closed by the district last year. Hood said Tuesday it would be part of CPS’ capital budget, which is weeks away from being finalized. But it wouldn’t surprise us if they looked at that $18.7 million cost, decided to round it to $20 million, multiply it by five and send it out to media. Nor would it shock us to see CPS overpay for window box units instead of heading to Cook Brothers, where they "stack ‘em deep and sell ‘em cheap.”
Maybe air conditioning would have come sooner at the bargaining table when the Chicago Teachers Union went on strike in 2012. One of the union’s demands was for air conditioning in classrooms. Emanuel said then, “Everything here is down to two final issues, and it’s not air conditioning, OK? ...We don’t go on strike for air conditioning.”