Report Details Schools’ HVAC Problems

Accompanying spreadsheets show the district going through and fixing nearly all of the urgent problems on the list.

The New Haven Board of Education asked the district to bring in an independent, air-quality inspection company as one of the conditions to reopening schools during the Covid-19 pandemic. City, state and Yale experts were already touring the buildings and making notes on what needed to change.

Fuss & O’Neill started those tours early in the fall and has been sending its recommendations to the district since then.

The final report was sent out to Board of Education members, city alders and each school’s administrators by Tuesday morning. Read the full report here, a checklist of the status of each recommendation here and more details on isolation rooms for students and staff with Covid-19 symptoms here.

The Fuss & O’Neill report addresses each school separately, with no overarching summary of the state of the district’s schools.

Some schools, like now-closed Quinnipiac and West Rock schools, have ​“significant deficiencies” that need to be addressed before reopening, according to the report. Other schools had ​“some deficiencies” or simply ​“have deficiencies,” in the language of the report.

The spreadsheets show nearly all of the recommendations necessary to reopening — excluding those for Quinnipiac and West Rock — as taken care of. For example, the main recommendation for Bishop Woods Architecture & Design Magnet School was to replace all air filters with MERV 13 filters, which can better block viral particles. This has happened. The other recommendation was to change air flow in the isolation room for Covid-19 patients so that air does not recirculate into the nurse’s suite. This has also happened, according to the district’s isolation room spreadsheet.

The only building currently open that still has a pending recommendation is Nathan Hale School, where a Covid-related factory shutdown has delayed repairing some ventilation machinery for the gym. The notes on the spreadsheet say that one of the pieces of machinery that handles the gym ventilation is fully repaired and that Fuss & O’Neill confirmed that would be enough to keep up to 70 people safe there for now.

The other schools with pending repairs are high schools. James Hillhouse High School needs additional ductwork in the third floor women’s bathroom. New Haven Academy needs ventilation in the security and gym offices and two classrooms in the Sound School’s Thomas building need a ventilation redesign.