The Poway (Calif.) Unified School District is spending $10 million of general fund reserves to replace a failing air conditioning system at two of its schools.
The San Diego Union-Tribune reports that Rancho Bernardo High School and Bernardo Heights Middle School, which share an air conditioning system, have been mostly without cool air since students began classes on Aug. 17.
The school board authorized the expenditure in a unanimous vote.
Officials say replacement of the system will cost between $8 million and $10 million and will take upward of a year to complete. In the meantime, two rental chiller units have been brought in to provide relief.
The HVAC system at the high school and middle school is an outdated and unreliable system, Superintendent Marian Kim Phelps wrote in a letter to parents on Aug. 25.
For several weeks, the district has been working to fix problems with the air conditioning system, which has left students and teachers sweating in their classrooms. The original system was installed in 1988 with bond funding. In 2010, a major retrofit was performed.
