![\"\"](\"https:\/\/pueblowarriors.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/Pueblo-High-School-Engineer-Robert-Fuentes.jpg\")
<\/a>As Pueblo marches well into the second quarter, and November is upon us, the weather is at last cooling off. It seems that for many, summer lasted longer than usual this year. Unfortunately, for many students and teachers, it felt like \u201csummer\u201d inside <\/strong>the classroom as well for much of the first quarter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During summer break, the\nair conditioning systems are shut down to save money. However, when several\nteachers returned to this new school year, they discovered that their\nclassrooms were hot; and they stayed hot sometimes for weeks well into late\nSeptember.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Marketing teacher Dr.\nMaria Bicknell, located in the Tech Building, is one of those teachers sweltering\nin extremely uncomfortable conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI tried to be positive in\nthis hot classroom, but it was hard to manage at times,\u201d Bicknell said. \u201cThere\nwere some days I felt sick when I left Pueblo at the end of the day\u2014like I was\ngoing to throw up.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bicknell\u2019s neighbor and\nanother Tech Building teacher, English and journalism teacher for the past 28\nyears at Pueblo, Mr. Rana Medhi, said, \u201cOur administrators and district\nengineers need to ensure that we teachers and our students are comfortable on\nthe first day of school. There\u2019s no excuse for hot classrooms year after year.\nStudents cannot learn in 92-degree classrooms, and old teachers can\u2019t tolerate\nthe heat anymore.\u201d He paused and added, \u201cIt seems to me that we educators\nshould feel confident about returning to a new school year with everything\nworking and having comfortable teaching environments.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Medhi added that he was\nfortunate that he had to teach elsewhere for just two weeks; some teachers\nweren\u2019t so lucky\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr. Valentino Martin,\nPueblo\u2019s auto shop teacher\u2014and his students\u2014suffered in the heat since from the\nbeginning of the school year. He and his classroom had to be relocated to the\nSpecial Projects Room, which was very inconvenient for his curriculum, although\nstudents still learned about auto shop safety and other issues until students\nwere finally able to return to T-9 when the air conditioning was repaired.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then, on Aug. 23, the\nA\/C stopped working again, and Martin and his students were relocated again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another Tech Building\nteacher, photography teacher Ms. Emma Tarazon-Oetting, also had to be relocated\nto other locations while air conditioning unit was repaired.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Other non-Tech Building\nclassrooms were also excessively hot during the first quarter across campus,\nand several teachers had to be relocated until the air conditioning was\nrepaired.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Assistant Principal\nDavid Monta\u00f1o said that before students and teachers returned for the new\nschool, all of the air conditioning units were working, but a major\nthunderstorm just before school started disrupted several of the A\/C units. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBased on the age of\nsome of these A\/C units, repairs are bound to be needed,\u201d Monta\u00f1o said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n However, summer did end\nat last, which alleviated teachers and students in classrooms that still had\ninadequate air conditioning. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Many other environments suffered\nas well. Even though the weight room may boast air, the room is cooled only by\na swamp cooler and big fans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Just the opposite\noccurred in many classrooms as fall began in late September\u2014classrooms\nexperiencing frigid temperatures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Junior Sarahi Perez said, \u201cThere are some days when the AVID classroom was downright Arctic, and so was [science teacher] Ms. Amaro\u2019s classroom. The AVID classroom is either freezing or hot\u2014it\u2019s never normal in there. It seems that it\u2019s never a healthy environment in which to learn.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Another student,\nsophomore Dezarae Valenzuela, said that the Student Council room [Mr. Obregon\u2019s\nclassroom] is very cold. I\u2019d rather it be cold than hot, but sometimes you need\na thick blanket to stay warm.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Junior Angel Leeth said\nthat in her math class, taught by Ms. Rhesa Olsen, she sometimes has to borrow\nher teacher\u2019s blankets, which she keeps in her classroom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s very difficult to\nconcentrate in her frigid classroom,\u201d Leeth said. \u201cIt\u2019s so cold, I fall\nasleep.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The AC system in the\nmain building is controlled and set by TUSD at 76 degrees, but the question\nremains: Why were the temperatures in some classrooms and the library 59\ndegrees or colder?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pueblo has just one\nengineer, Mr. Robert Fuentes, a 1997 Pueblo graduate, who has been employed for\nthe past 14 years; however, for the past 10 years, he has been the only engineer\non site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He explained that the\nnew equipment to maintain Pueblo\u2019s cooling and heating systems are working with\nan old 1980\u2019s pneumatic system. In other words, two different systems are\ntrying to work together, often unsuccessfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI like what I do,\u201d\nFuentes said, \u201cbut it\u2019s frustrating maintaining an entire school by myself most\nof the time.\u201d He added, \u201cI have to do what I have to do to make classrooms feel\ncomfortable for our students and teachers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He paused and added, \u201cThis\nschool needs to prioritize repairs on its cooling system.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Isari Martinez & Xylenn Nevarez As Pueblo marches well into the second quarter, and November is upon us, the weather is at last cooling off. It seems that for many, summer lasted longer than usual this year. Unfortunately, for many students and teachers, it felt like \u201csummer\u201d inside the classroom as well for much … Continue reading AC Drama Continues At Pueblo<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[167,6,34,221],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pA2u4-Q9","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pueblowarriors.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3233"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pueblowarriors.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pueblowarriors.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pueblowarriors.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pueblowarriors.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3233"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/pueblowarriors.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3238,"href":"https:\/\/pueblowarriors.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3233\/revisions\/3238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pueblowarriors.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pueblowarriors.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pueblowarriors.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>