MP School Board looks into air conditioning elementary schools

BY KARYN SPORY

Mt. Pleasant News

As the weather begins to cool down, most people?s thoughts won?t be revolving around air conditioning, but the Mt. Pleasant Community School District Board of Education sure is.

The board spoke briefly Monday during its regular meeting about air conditioning the elementary schools. Superintendent John Henriksen said the site committee had met with engineering firms Shive Hattery, of Cedar Rapids, as well as Brooks, Borgs and Skiles, of Des Moines. ?It has been very interesting discussions,? said Henriksen. ?I think what we?re finding out is it?s not as easy as hooking up chillers to the elementary schools. It?s a lot of things to consider.?

Discussions with both firms, Henriksen said, revolved around the age and square footage of the buildings, as well as the age and performance of buildings systems like piping and ventilators.

?The piping and unit ventilators are all original and some of that piping is asbestos covered as are some of the ceiling tiles in some of those buildings,? said Henriksen. ?That all has to be considered as we consider what we remove.?

Henriksen went on to say that Iowa public building codes require lifecycle cost analysis for three different systems. The district will be looking into chilled water, chilled beans and geothermal cooling.

At this point in the discussion, Henriksen said the district needs to do a feasibility study, the lifecycle analysis and consider the life expectancy of the elementary school buildings as two were built in the 1950s and the other two a decade later.

?A HAVAC system is a 20-25 year investment,? he said.

Henriksen said there is one more engineering firm he would like to talk to. ?We?re learning at this point what this is going to take,? he said.

Board member Melinda Huisinga said what she has learned as a member of the site committee is that air conditioning the elementary schools is a much larger project than they originally thought.

Henriksen said no firm would give him an estimate on how much this might cost the district, as it depends on which system is chosen, but he is sure it will be a multi-million dollar project.

In other business, the board heard a presentation from High School Principal Todd Liechty regarding ACT scores. In 2016, Mt. Pleasant had 94 students take the ACT test. Overall, student score averages were at or above state levels. Student reading comprehension scores were 73 percent, which was the state level.

Board member Dave Christensen pointed out that the student?s composite was tied for the best composite score for the past 26 years. ?The science was the highest in the (past) 26 years and reading was the second best in 26 years, and so was the math,? he said.

?The best part of it is we had more test takers this year than we have had in the past five years,? said Liechty. ?Generally speaking, the more test takers your scores go down a little bit because you have more students testing who are on the margins, but we had our test takers score better than we had in previous years. We should be proud of that.?

Liechty said while he is proud of the students, he knows strides can be made to be better. ?It?s not where we want to be and we will continue to grow,? he said.

The next meeting of the Mt. Pleasant School Board will be held on Monday, Oct. 10, at 6 p.m., in the high school media center.