Northern Lehigh School District operated on a two-hour delay Tuesday morning; while the high school operated on a Virtual Instruction Day following a heating loss that occurred Monday morning.

Assistant Superintendent Dr. Tania Stoker said this morning the Virtual Instruction Day was due to the heating loss that occurred Monday morning.

“Some rooms were not at an appropriate temperature level for students and staff at the start of the school day,” Stoker said. “However, temperatures in the building are still continuing to rise.”

Stoker added, “We will continue to monitor conditions throughout the day and make decisions regarding the remainder of the week as needed.”

The announcement came after several parents aired their concerns over the situation at Monday’s school board meeting.

“These kids were there for four-and-half hours in 40-some degree temperatures, not acceptable,” Amanda Maehrer said. “I don’t know who dropped the ball, I don’t care who dropped the ball.”

Maehrer said when there was a water main break, the students were out by 8:30, 9 a.m., but that on Monday, there were there until 11:30 a.m.

“My kid came home freezing, most of these kids came home, their red cheeks, red fingers,” she said. “They were in those temperatures for four-and-a-half hours.”

Maehrer said the classrooms upstairs were 47 degrees.

“It’s like being in a refrigerator all day long,” she said. “And I’m sorry, but that’s really truly unacceptable.

“I hope that it doesn’t happen again, and I hope (today) whatever we found was the problem, we fixed it,” she said. She requested that children be able to stay home if it’s not fixed.

“Why it wasn’t called earlier, I don’t know. Why weren’t those kids transported to the middle school or the elementary school where the heat was working?”

Cassie Hale said parents were initially told there wasn’t a heating issue.

“I just want to know why were we lied to,” Hale said. “Why wasn’t there open communication, we get Robocalls, texts, emails for everything else; I think parents should have been notified.”

Hale said she was given the reasoning on the phone that staff had just found out 15 minutes before students got there.

Eric King said there’s no way somebody just walked in the high school building 15 minutes before it opened and realized the temperatures were cold, and that there had to have been somebody in that building at least an hour earlier.

“I don’t know what explanation was given, there’s no reason that heat should have been that low,” King said. “If somebody sat there and said we turn the heat down to save money over the weekend, that’s absolutely ridiculous; we knew what temperature it was going to be outside for a week in advance of what was going to happen.

“So whoever dropped the ball needs to be held accountable for these things. This is the third school that has had heating issues this school year.”

King voiced concern over the building and grounds maintenance teams and the lack of plowing and maintenance.

“You guys are asking for tax increases for things and you can’t even properly maintain the buildings that we have,” he said. “You’re spending all kinds of money putting logos on buildings, you want to authorize us to put a logo on the outside of the high school; that is unacceptable for you guys to even ask the community for a single dollar more when you can’t even manage to keep the heat on in the buildings that we already have.

King said the board needs to hold employees accountable.

“If this is one person that’s dropping the ball, that person needs to be reprimanded, that person needs to be let go, they don’t know how to do their job,” he said. “Decisions need to be made; the board needs to take control of the authority that they have and fire this person.

“Things need to change,” he said. “You guys cannot ask us for more money when you cannot properly maintain what we have.”

District responds to incident

Stoker responded about Monday’s situation.

“We had a failure in one of our electronic systems that would notify us of any loss of heat,” Stoker said. “When we had our maintenance department come in and when they were aware that there was a heating loss, they worked on the valve that was stuck, they fixed that, they turned the systems up to blow at 120 degrees to try to get the heat up as quickly as possible. It was rising and then it just plateaued because of the cold weather that was outside.

“Our maintenance department at that point readjusted, they closed the dampers for the outside air coming in, they did some extra things that they could do to try to make the heat come up faster, so we were getting incremental gains in heat throughout the morning, and then it just kind of plateaued.

“At that point that’s when the decision was made to send students home and dismissal occurred at 11:15 in the (Monday) morning, and students will be excused. “So if students were taken out earlier then that, they were excused, I believe (high school Principal) Dr. (Lori) Bali spoke to some parents specifically as they were picking up their children and notified them that this was not be an unexcused absence.

“We are at this point monitoring the heat, making sure that the systems are working properly, we’re checking (Monday) evening, we’re going to be up early (Tuesday) morning and making a decision about if there’s heat at the high school and what that looks like for tomorrow (Tuesday).”

Stoker said the goal is that everybody that would be coming into the buildings would be in a safe and warm environment.”

Maehrer said she understood the maintenance crew was working on it, “but in the same aspect, why are our children having to endure that while it rises slowly. It’s negative numbers outside; they should have been sent home period.

“They shouldn’t have to endure while it slowly, gradually gets to a temperature, that’s not fair to them. Forty-seven degrees; let me turn the air conditioning on in the winter time in your office at 47 degrees and tell me how you would feel for four-and-a-half hours.”

King said they wanted to know why this decision was made differently than what happened last week at the middle school.

Board President Mathias Green told King that they were finished with recognition of guests.

“You had an opportunity to speak, we listened to what you had to say, and we’re past that time on the agenda,” Green said. “It’s time for adjournment.”

Director Crystal Bilby said there is a school code that a building has to be at a certain temperature.

“So they do have a point; I guess they need to understand there was an issue with the buses and getting buses from one school back over here and that’s what the 11:15 problem was getting the kids out of school,” Bilby said. “So yes, it was 47 degrees, whoever lied to you, I’m sorry that that happened.”

King said the buses should never have been sent out.

“Somebody walked in this building and saw it was 47 degrees in the morning,” he said. “They should have turned around and said we got to have a virtual day.”

Green implored King to refrain from asking any more questions.

“Come on Mr. King, I’ve asked you before, public comment is over,” he said. “I’ve asked you before and I’m going to ask you again, public comment is over.”