ROGERS, Ark. — The Rogers School District says 17 of their 30 gymnasiums do not have air conditioning. Some schools have more than one gym. These unairconditioned gyms are exterior buildings not connected to the school. With the extreme temperatures we’ve experienced over the last few months this issue is causing some concern for community members.
At one elementary school, 5NEWS was told the recorded temperature inside the gymnasium was in the 90s on multiple occasions.
“The temperatures are not appropriate for learning or teaching. They right now are revolving between five and 12 degrees higher than the outside temperature,” said Libby Brown.
Libby Brown’s husband is a PE teacher at an elementary school in Rogers. She’s concerned not only for her husband but for these children who do physical activity with such high heat and humidity and no air conditioning.
“It is just really frustrating to see the extent to which he’s drained after working in 90-degree temperatures all day,” she said.
These detached gyms without air conditioning are metal buildings with light insulation, but they do have heat. Superintendent Jeff Perry says when most of these gyms were built decades ago people weren’t as accustomed to air conditioning as they are now.
“Those two factors together that most everyone is dependent on air conditioning, there seems to be an extreme period of heat later into the fall and earlier into the spring, we realize we have to do something,” Perry said.
Perry said they know there is a need and the district is working with a couple of different companies to look at options that are the most feasible and cost-effective. Those options include building another shell around the current building to create better insulation and putting A/C units inside. Another option is building an addition to schools that attaches to it.
“It will not be immediate, and we won’t have all these fixed by next year but it will be a situation where we will come up with a plan. We will put that with the hundreds of other capital needs into our program,” he said.
The superintendent also says they already have a number of capital improvement projects like new roofs and adding safety features, so this will be added to the list.
Another concern we heard about was these metal buildings not having water for students to stay hydrated. They say most all students bring water bottles to school and fill them up before heading to PE.
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