It’s time for a long-term plan for Helen Baker

We can’t say we weren’t told. In the wake of failed building referendums, the Glencoe-Silver Lake (GSL) School Board and administration have warned us time and again that we need to address issues at the aging Helen Baker Elementary School.
Thursday night, School Board members heard that the heating system has responded well to the early and frigid cold snap; in fact, it has responded all too well.
According to the recap of the School Board meeting printed in today’s Chronicle, many of our elementary school children are coming in from single-digit outdoor temperatures into classrooms where temperatures are pushing close to 100 degrees. Not a healthy situation, at all, for our school district’s children and staff.
It was reported that two School Board members — Jason Lindeman and Jamie Alsleben — had an emergency meeting last week with administrators and the facilities manager to try and find a fix. Unfortunately, no easy solution presented itself.
It seems the heating system is run pneumatically, and air leaks are causing pressure issues. When the pressure falls, valves don’t close and the heat continues. The air leaks are most likely caused by failing solder joints. There are probably thousands of those joints in the building, Lindeman reported, and many are behind walls. Others are above ceilings that contain asbestos.
The School Board set a special workshop session for Monday, Nov. 24, to hear updates from its facilities staff and hopefully find solutions to Helen Baker’s oven-roasting classrooms.
While this issue needs to be immediately addressed as a potential health concern — not to mention the dollars wasted in overheating the building — we hope the School Board also will begin, again, talking about finding long-term solutions to its facility needs. The heating issue at Helen Baker is just one of many deficiencies of the building.
While Helen Baker’s needs are the most immediate, the district needs to be assessing all of its buildings. It’s time for a comprehensive building program that can be implemented over a period of years.
The further we kick this can down the road, the more it is going to cost. Let’s get it taken care of now. Our children deserve no less.