LYNN — The city will spend up to $5.5 million to fix the blocked-off ventilation systems in the district’s 10 oldest public school buildings.
The Lynn School Committee authorized the spending at its meeting last week. The money would come from savings in the school department budget that have accumulated due to students learning remotely since last spring.
The funds would go toward reopening and upgrading the current ventilation systems that were blocked off in the 1970s in those 10 schools; or installing 177 Energy Recovery Ventilators in each classroom within those buildings, according to Michael Donovan, chief of the city’s Inspectional Services Department.
Either option would bring fresh air into classrooms and other spaces. However, Donovan recommended that the city choose to move forward with reactivating and modernizing the current ventilation systems in nine of those school buildings — Aborn, Brickett, Cobbet, Drewicz, Fallon, Lincoln-Thomson, Tracy, Pickering, and Washington S.T.E.M. But Donovan said that officials may be forced into the other option for Tracy, which is in such poor shape that it may not be cost effective to use its current system.
Donovan said the city’s consultant, Trane Engineering, came up with a separate solution for the 10th school, Fecteau-Leary Junior/Senior High School, which has a ventilation system that can be reopened by installing new equipment and controls to make it work.
“In regards to the central system, it’s a little bit easier, in that normally, yes, there are less filters, but there (are) less motors than 177 motors in 177 units,” said Donovan. “My preference and the preference of my people is to have the central units because it’s one unit, maintainable, easier and it will work. But either units will work and it’s going to depend on the buildings themselves.”
Work for either option, including the separate work at Fecteau-Leary, is estimated to cost about $4.5 million, Donovan said, and that the price could vary plus or minus 15 percent of that estimate.
Ultimately, the School Committee chose to allow $5.5 million in department spending for the project last Thursday. With its unanimous vote, the panel also authorized city and school officials to send a waiver letter to the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), requesting that the capital upgrade expense be counted toward the city’s net school spending requirement.
“Otherwise, that kind of capital expense wouldn’t be eligible,” said School Committee member Jared Nicholson, explaining that the waiver might not be needed if the city ended up meeting its net school spending requirement at the end of the fiscal year.
Since the city has had issues meeting its net school spending requirement in the past, Nicholson said the School Committee would normally be careful about asking for a waiver.
“The purpose of the net school spending is to make sure the dollars are spent on students directly, but I think we all expect these operational savings to be one-time savings,” said Nicholson. “I think it makes sense to use one-time operational savings to make an investment in a capital expenditure, particularly when we know this capital expenditure is going to go toward … the importance of (improving) the air circulation.”
Mayor Thomas M. McGee, who chairs the School Committee, said the project would be paid for with school department savings that the city is seeing because students are not in schools right now. The project would not be funded at the expense of taking dollars away from the operation of the schools, he said.
“In some ways this could be an opportunity to take savings we might have to address what’s been an ongoing issue in these buildings since they were closed off in the 1970s,” said McGee, explaining that the city chose to block off ventilation systems in those school buildings at the time to save money during an oil crisis. “COVID-19 may have provided us with this opportunity given what’s going on now.”
School Business Administrator Kevin McHugh said the school department accumulated $2.8 million in budget savings from last year, from March 1 to June, and has already saved that same amount this school year.
Much of the savings is coming from transportation because the majority of students are not being bussed and smaller fees for students in special education placements, McHugh said.
Chief Financial Officer Michael Bertino added that the city also saw better than average savings from electric and heating bills for the schools, estimating that over time that would translate to $1.1 to $1.2 million in savings.
Although the DESE waiver might not be needed, Bertino said it would allow the city to “streamline this project and get it done quicker than under normal circumstances.”
If the project exceeds $5.5 million, Bertino said the city would request more funds from an additional source, which could consist of asking the City Council for approval to use free cash for the remainder of the capital upgrades.
“We’re in a unique situation where there is realized savings we can bring to bear on fixing an issue that has been the case for decades,” said Superintendent Dr. Patrick Tutwiler. “And then in terms of impact, it is savings. The percent of the total budget these funds would represent, in our view, we don’t see this as being detrimental in any way to our day-to-day operations in what we foresee as being this school year.”
Donovan said the project will take months to complete. In the meantime, the city has purchased and installed portable air purifiers for those 10 school buildings, which were paid for with Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act funding.
The unsafe conditions in those 10 school buildings were revealed in the findings of a Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) report, which showed that the ventilation systems were blocked off and the schools were in violation of the building code.
School officials had been waiting on the findings of the report, which was shared with the committee last month, as the district continues to assess whether it’s safe for students to return to school for in-person learning, as part of a hybrid model, later in the school year.
