Students and staff at Newberg High School experienced colder-than-usual classroom temperatures today. The HVAC system started up normally at 4:00 AM, but around 5:15 it unexpectedly shut down. It took a little bit of time for the custodial team to manually override the system to get it started again, which contributed to the lower temperatures in some areas of the building. That, coupled with the cold temperatures outside today, made conditions less than ideal.

By 10:30 this morning, most classrooms were up to temperature, with the exception of a few isolated rooms in the B building. Administrative offices were also affected by this issue.

The district is running diagnostics to figure out why this happened so it can be fixed. These HVAC issues are isolated. The last mechanical incident was on December 12. Custodial staff has been instructed to check the boilers first thing each day, which is how these issues are identified. Today, the system kicked on as programmed, but unexpectedly stopped.

Improvements to the HVAC system, including new control software, were put in place as part of the bond passed in 2011. The district is actively looking into what caused today’s incident so staff and students do not experience these conditions in the future.