ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. – Students at University High School in Orange County are heading into their second week of school without reliable air conditioning and parents say the heat is taking a real toll on their kids.
With feels-like temperatures topping 100 degrees across Central Florida, parents say classrooms have become too hot to learn in. One parent, who asked not to be identified, says her daughter came home sick three days in a row.
“It happened three days in a row where she had a headache, didn’t feel good, really hot and red in the face,” the parent said.
The situation got bad enough that she had to pull her daughter out early.
“I had to dismiss her from school -- she was dehydrated, she stated her whole body hurt,” the parent said. “She feels like she can’t concentrate in class.”
University High School parents received a message through the school’s portal Monday stating, “Our school is experiencing an issue with the air conditioning on campus. OCPS maintenance has been notified and is working on it. We will do our best to keep students & staff as comfortable as possible while it gets fixed. Additional water breaks will be provided.”
But for some parents, that notice didn’t come soon enough.
“It’s unacceptable. I feel like by day two, if they hadn’t fixed the AC, then we should have been alerted immediately,” one parent said.
The parent also said fans were placed in classrooms, but they weren’t providing much relief.
“She reported they do have fans, but the fans are just circulating hot air,” the parent said.
In a statement to News 6, Orange County Public Schools said the air conditioning outage at University High School happened late Monday afternoon.
The district added: “Given the extreme heat our area has experienced over the past week, air conditioning systems are operating under increased strain and, like any mechanical equipment, can occasionally experience unexpected failures.”
An OCPS teacher told News 6 before the start of the school year that broken AC is not an uncommon problem and that it directly affects students’ ability to learn.
“If my air conditioning’s not working, my students aren’t learning, because we’re all hot, and we’re tired, and we’re cranky, and we’re angry and a fan is not doing it,” the teacher said.
In the meantime, the parent says her daughter is now packing extra water every day to get through the school day.
“Now I’m sending her to school with three (water bottles) and I’m freezing them so it will last her the entire day,” she said.
OCPS says maintenance has been notified and is working to resolve the issue.
News 6 will continue to follow this story.