With the Bulloch County Schools all starting classes Thursday, one school, Mattie Lively Elementary, has some special measures in place to try to keep students and teachers cool while longer-term arrangements are made for a complete replacement of its ailing air-conditioning system.

The new tinting applied to the windows over the summer is meant to be permanent. The portable cooling units in use in at least 10 classrooms are temporary, as is the practice of setting the AC to turn on early, at 3 a.m. on school days to "pre-cool" the building instead of later when the first staff members arrive. 

"We've got portable units; the windows have been tinted. They've taken a few measures to try and make it has comfortable as possible for our staff and students here," new MLES Principal Bernard Bodison said Monday afternoon.

Although new in the top job this summer, Bodison is starting his second school year at Mattie Lively, after serving as assistant principal there during the 2023–24 term. Before that he was a school administrator and teacher in Savannah.

Asked if the window tinting helps, he said, "It's not going to save the world, but it definitely decreases the amount of heat energy that comes into those classrooms."

Still, the school has one previously used classroom that will not be used for classes "because it was a little hot." Students having been relocated to a cooler classroom that was available.

The long-term fix

Of course, what the school has is actually an HVAC system, for heating, ventilation and air-conditioning, but the "AC" part is all that everyone thinks about when a school year starts in the middle of summer while "feels like" temperatures outside regularly top 100 degrees. 

"That HVAC system has some failing parts and pieces to it, and we know that we need to renovate it completely, demo the old system that's currently there and go back and replace it with a brand-new system," Brad Boykin, Bulloch County Schools assistant superintendent for business services, said Monday. "So we know that's the long-term fix."

School system staff members have known for about a year now that Mattie Lively's HVAC, a "variable refrigerant flow" system installed when the current building was built in 2010, was beginning to fail.

The Board of Education on Oct. 12, 2023, approved a contract for the architectural firm James W. Buckley & Associates to provide design services for the Mattie Lively HVAC replacement. Buckley's 6% fee was expected to total about $102,960 based on an estimated project cost of $1,716,000, the minutes state. 

"Construction projects can sometimes take time, and we want to pay attention to the details in the design work as well so that we're designing the system to work efficiently, effectively and for us not to run into the same problems that we're running into now," Boykin said.

Also as part of the detailed planning, the school district staff has sought state funding for the project through the Georgia Department of Education. Bulloch County Schools applied for a total of $990,000 in state "capital outlay" funding, with remaining Education Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax revenue from the 2017 E-SPLOST referendum budgeted to cover the rest of the cost, he said.

More recently the school system advertised for bids for a "construction manager at risk" to handle the project, instead of a traditional general contractor. The advertised bid date was June 17. Bids were received from two firms, and a recommendation will probably be made to the board in August, Boykin said, with Superintendent Charles Wilson also on the phone for the interview.

"We're looking to hire a construction manager at risk for the board to approve for us to work alongside the architect and the contractor to the get the best fix possible for the school," Boykin said.

The bids have been reviewed and scored for comparison, he said. Meanwhile, people from the school system's maintenance department met with the architectural firm's engineers, who have begun preliminary design drawings.

'Year-long process'

The schedule — and how much of the system replacement can be done while school is in session — remains to be worked out with the selected construction manager, said Boykin and Wilson. The time between ordering equipment and its delivery will also be a factor, Boykin noted.

"One of the benefits of working with a construction manager as opposed to just a hard bid is problem solving in a situation like this," Wilson said. "They're more of a partner with us as opposed to just we spec it and they have to do exactly what we say, and because this is so complex, we needed their help to figure this out."

He said the goal is to replace the HVAC system "the best way we can with the minimum problems or discomfort to the people in that building."

"In the end, it's going to take us probably a year-long process. …, " Wilson said. "During that year there might be some things we can do up-front and get some things better and have to work around some things. … What we don't want to do is completely disrupt that learning environment, or on the other hand leave them disrupted because it's hot."

The existing system was already causing discomfort in some classrooms when temperatures rose in the 2023–24 school year before summer break. So the school sent parents and guardians of children a letter in early May stating some of the planned measures to address the problem.

"The current system's condensers and control boards, which are crucial components, have been failing," that letter explained, continuing, "An additional challenge is that one condensing unit serves multiple pods of classrooms." It further cited "challenges due to supply chain issues and extended lead times for replacement control boards and condensers."

An updated letter was sent electronically to parents and guardians on Monday with Boykin's name at the bottom.

The new letter reports that additional parts for the existing system have been ordered in advance "to address current issues promptly" when they occur, and notes that more portable HVAC units were ordered "to provide temporary relief … in classrooms where the HVAC system is not functioning optimally." It also reports that the window tinting was completed and is meant to decrease the workload on the system and maintain cooler indoor temperatures.

Portables in use

Between 15 and 20 of the portable HVAC units were supplied to the school, Boykin said, and Principal Bodison reported that portable units were helping to cool "probably not less than 10" classrooms on Monday before the late-afternoon open house for students and their families.

The daily 3 a.m. start-up time for the system is "to hopefully cool the building down while there's cooler temperatures outside," and the controls were also set to allow it to run later into the evening so there is less time for the building to heat back up, Boykin said.

Cooler lights, later

Besides the eventual HVAC replacement, another planned longer-term measure noted in the update but not yet undertaken is replacement of the school's fluorescent lighting with LEDs, which Boykin said produce less heat while also using less electricity.