County Schools Air Conditioning Priority List Could Change

A priority list ranking the order in which county schools in need of air conditioning would get serviced could see some shake-ups.

"Our initial air conditioning list was determined based on age, which was shared with the county earlier," said Superintendent Dallas Dance, in an email statement to Patch. "However, I also shared that as we begin to develop the 10-yr [sic] capital plan, that will drive all capital projects including air, there will be additional factors that are used to determine the order of capital projects."

Currently, approximately 40 percent of public schools in Baltimore County are not fully air conditioned. Officials have largely blamed this issue on the school system overseeing one of the oldest stocks of schools in the state—second only to Baltimore City.

At a Thursday night Baltimore County PTA meeting, County Executive Kevin Kamenetz said other factors such as cost to install air conditioning and school enrollment figures should be taken into consideration for the list.

"To me, it's not enough [to just consider age]," Kamenetz said.

School air conditioning projects are contingent on government funding and as such, there is no timeline for the priority list, which was first released at a September 2012 Board of Education meeting.