Parent questions U46 school delay in turning on air conditioning last week

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Students line up for the bus after a day of classes Tuesday at Eastview Middle School in Bartlett. Temperatures are cooler then in recent weeks where temperatures reached hot and humid conditions. May 17, 2011 | Michael Smart~Sun-Times Media

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Updated: September 29, 2011 12:38AM

BARTLETT — Basila Deany, 14, saw the whole thing happen.

The eighth-grader was in chorus class at Eastview Middle School on May 10 when one of her classmates passed out, Basila said. They had been standing on risers, she said, and he hit his head as he fell.

Other students were falling asleep in class, she said. She had a headache by the time she got home from school, and she said one of her friends threw up.

“It was hot,” Basila said. “Kids were making fans and stuff out of their assignment notebooks.”

Temperatures across the area hit a record 90 degrees that day, heating up the insides of schools throughout the Fox Valley at a time when most of them were unprepared for the sudden onslaught summer-like air.

The blast of hot weather turned Eastview — which hadn’t yet turned on its air conditioning — into a “death trap,” according to Basila’s mom, Rita Deany of Bartlett.

Eastview Principal Donald Donner doesn’t dispute a student passed out during chorus last week.

But that was two days later, on Thursday, when the school turned on its air conditioning and temperatures outside had begun to cool, Donner said. And that student wasn’t feeling well, he added.

“No kids were vomiting. No kids were passing out. Nobody went to the nurse,” he said. “Everything was fine” on May 10, he said.

As temperatures jumped about 20 degrees outside on May 10 from the day before, they also rose about 10 or 15 degrees inside the Bartlett middle school, according to the principal. That put temperatures in the 70s in most classrooms, he said.

About 80 percent of Eastview’s classrooms have windows, he said, and teachers opened them May 10 to let breezes through the building.

The computer lab, with 34 computers and monitors running, was slightly warmer, he admitted. The school switched off the machines and moved students to a different room, he explained.

Donner knows this, he said, because there are thermometers throughout the school’s heating and cooling system that send readings both to its custodian’s computer and to Elgin School District U46’s Plant Operations department.

Police report filed

Deany said she knows “for sure” two students passed out on May 10, including the one in her daughter’s chorus class, and that one student reported the temperatures on thermometers in his classroom hit 86 degrees.

She pulled her three children out of school to cool off “for a couple hours” the next day, she said. And after several hours of trying to get information from the school that day, she said, she filed a police report against the school with the Bartlett Police Department.

“My kids were dizzy, nauseous, red eyes. They wanted to go to sleep. They were worn out,” Deany said.

“I understand the A/C was to be turned on later this month, but we’re talking about unseasonably high temperatures, and I’m wondering who was looking out for the children,” she said.

Donner said it’s up to each U46 principal to decide when to switch over from heating to cooling in his or her building.

He had planned to shut off the boiler system at Eastview this past Monday, he said, after checking weather forecasts and noting the weekend cold snap that brought temperatures down to a low of 37 degrees. But after Deany’s complaints, he said it was shut off last Wednesday, and the air conditioning turned on the next day.

“Once it’s off, it’s off, so it’s a little chilly today,” he said Tuesday.