Orange County teachers’ union raises safety concerns after school A/C issue

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — Orange County teachers are raising concerns about safety after the air conditioning was out at Ocoee Middle School on Monday.

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Three students went to the hospital for non-life-threatening issues, but the district said it is unclear what caused them to be ill.

Orange County Public Schools Superintendent Maria Vazquez and some board members addressed the incident Tuesday night.

OCPS said technicians and their vendors immediately responded to the problem.

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However, the teachers’ union claims the district failed to take necessary and immediate action to protect their students and staff.

Eyewitness News spoke to Clinton McCracken, president of the Orange County Classroom Teachers Association.

He said the school didn’t respond fast enough by notifying parents or moving students and staff to a safe and cooler space.

He shared a photo he received from a teacher. He said it showed a thermostat inside Ocoee Middle at 85 degrees.

“So you’re in a classroom where you’re not allowed to open your door or prop it, and you can’t open any windows and there’s no A/C,” McCracken said.

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The school district disagreed with the union’s claim that the school didn’t respond fast enough.

“As soon as we know, we send messaging through the principal to the families, and we did in this case,” said Scott Howat, chief communications officer at Orange County Public Schools.

The Ocoee Fire Department said the school’s A/C went out around 7 a.m. Monday.

The school district said the first EMTs responded around 10:30 a.m.

However, parents were notified around 11 a.m. of the A/C problem. The district said in a message that the school invited parents and guardians to pick up their students and stated the school would provide extra water breaks.

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Around 1 p.m., the school notified parents that students and staff would be moved to cooler areas.

Board Member Melissa Byrd said the incident has raised questions about the district’s procedure and plans for these incidents. She requested a workshop.

“Not having air conditioning in an entire building in Florida is an emergency as we found out yesterday,” Byrd said.

“We should have a contingency plan in place for when temperatures get above a certain degree either in a classroom or in a school building that there is another location for them to take their students to,” McCracken said.

McCracken claimed this incident and others show the district’s lack of contingency plans.  The union said because of this, “teachers don’t feel respected.”

Two weeks ago, a pipe burst on Aloma Elementary’s campus. There was no running water.

McCracken wrote to the district asking for portable toilets.

“It should be considered an emergency if restrooms are not available for students or adults and either send students and employees home or arrange a portable toilet trailer to be brought to the campus as has been done in the past for other schools,” McCracken wrote in an email to the Superintendent and Deputy Superintendent August 26.

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“Teachers were making plans on their planning period that day to go to nearby restaurants, stores to go use the restroom,” McCracken told Eyewitness News.

“We addressed that immediately. We provided water,” Howat said. “They were given instructions on how to use the bathrooms and what they would be able to do. And in reality, they weren’t down that long. They were down for a few hours.”

The District said they have contingency plans for these events. In terms of if they should have sent all students home, the District said it has to keep in mind disrupting parents’ schedules.

OCPS said they didn’t want to send students home where they could possibly be unsupervised or unsafe.

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