Panther Valley School Board moved forward with the purchase of a new chiller unit for the intermediate school Wednesday.

But the school district won’t have the unit until sometime next year.

The board purchased the chiller from Trane for $293,722 under an Omina Partners Cooperative Contract.

The existing chiller unit, which is used to cool the intermediate school, is past the end of its life.

Funds for the purchase will come out the Capital Projects Funds, and the unit comes with one year of service, a five-year warranty, and maintenance staff will receive training on how to maintain it.

Business manager Jesse Walck said the lead time on the chiller is about 52 weeks due to the current supply chain issues.

The plan is to install the chiller next summer, he said.

“If some of the supply chain issues ease, it could be installed before then,” Walck said. “The project is only supposed to take a maximum of five days to remove the existing one, and install the new unit.

“The plan is for the contractor to notify us when the unit has arrived, and then we will schedule for the installation,” he said.

Drug-free

Superintendent David McAndrew Jr. said a sweep of the junior/senior high school with state police drug-detecting dogs on May 12 turned up no drugs.

“We’re really happy to report that we had no hits,” he said in his report to the board. “It was a drug-free school, which we’re very proud of.”

The school went onto lockdown for about 35 minutes for the search, and teachers and students remained in classrooms with ongoing instruction.

There was no risk to staff or students, and a notification was sent out to parents after the search took place, he said. The school did announce to staff and students that the search was being conducted and instruction was to continue, McAndrew said.

“If there is ever an emergency, we’ll be putting an “all call” out right away,” he told the board. “With an event like that, we couldn’t put an “all call” out and let people know what we were doing, or it would hinder the process.”

“All calls,” or alerts are put out through the Sapphire system, for which parents can sign up to receive notifications about weather-related events, reminders, announcements for PTO events, and emergencies, he said.

In other business, the board:

• Approved an application for a federal COPS School Violence Prevention Program for funding in the amount of $125,000. The grant requires 25% matching funds, which are anticipated to be made available by the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency. The total of grant funding and the match would be $156,250.

• Approved the homebound instruction for a seventh-grade student from May 8 to June 5.

• Approved a memorandum of understanding with the United Way of Greater Lehigh Valley, PVSD and St. Luke’s Health Network, effective July 1, 2023 to June 30, 2024.