On January 6, Boston Latin School students and staff returned from winter break to a frigid building as administrators navigated miscommunication with Boston Public Schools to determine the cause of the heating system malfunction.
Head of School Jason Gallagher first noticed the problem when he was walking around the building that morning. He explains that everything seemed fine until he reached a certain section of the School, where he noticed that there was no heat coming out of the radiators. With BLS divided into four heating zones, it was clear that one of those zones was not functioning properly.
BLS history teacher Ms. Meredith Elliott describes a similar experience from her first day back. She experienced a false sense of hope as she first walked into the School and noticed that the hallways were relatively warm. As she approached her classroom that morning, however, she found that the warmth was absent from her side of the building.
Gallagher contacted the district immediately upon noticing the malfunction. There were issues in communicating with BPS, however, as they were unable to send maintenance to the building. After several hours of back-and-forth phone calls, the administration was ultimately able to have personnel come and examine the heating. A small technical problem with the system was resolved within the day, but the affected zone continued to face lower-than-normal temperatures.
The combination of the old heating system at BLS along with BPS policy made reheating the School more difficult than expected. Due to the age of the building, it takes a while for the radiators to generate enough heat to raise the air temperature significantly. BPS policy also requires that the heat be shut off at the end of the school day. The combination of these factors leaves little time for temperatures to stabilize.
Emma Sullivan (II) recounts her experience with the heating that day: “[I] wasn’t able to focus [on my work as my] hands kept getting too cold [and I] wasn’t able to type or write.” She added that some of her classes still did not have heat for days after.
After making the district aware of this, the administration prolonged the heating period, allowing for more heating time. By the end of the week, the building was back to normal temperatures, finally meeting the minimum required temperature of 60 degrees Fahrenheit.
Gallagher expressed his gratitude and appreciation for the custodial staff and other administrators, acknowledging that he would not have been able to come to a resolution so quickly if not for them.
Similarly, Ms. Elliott noted the quick turnaround and effort from the administration to communicate with teachers about any developments in the situation. While to some, several days may seem like a long waiting period for a small technical issue, Ms. Elliott states that “this issue [with the heaters] was the quickest [she’s] ever had resolved for [her] classroom,” describing the resolution as a “pleasant surprise” in comparison to issues in previous years.
Unfortunately, BLS was not the only school to have been affected by the lower-than-average temperatures in classrooms after returning from winter break –– publications such as The Boston Globe also reported on other BPS classrooms with temperatures in the 30s and 40s.
As heating systems continue to face issues across BPS, the greater question of infrastructure updates arises. Gallagher reflects, “We should do a better job of upgrading systems so that this doesn’t happen, [but we appreciate how] the students work through it and how positive the teachers were in really, really tough times.”