Bolwarra Public School is not hot enough to qualify for air-conditioning in 10 new classrooms despite the area sweltering through 28 days above 35C last summer.
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The Department of Education is planning major capital works to deliver 10 new classrooms that will replace demountables with permanent facilities.
But those classrooms will not include air-conditioning unless it is self-funded because of the department’s Air Cooling Policy.
This will mean the P&C has to come up with the money, about $150,000, before construction starts in October.
The Air Cooling Policy states that schools with an average maximum January temperature of 33C or more are provided with air-cooling to all habitable spaces.
This, ironically, coincides with school holidays when the classrooms are empty.
Schools with an average January temperature between 30 and 33C have to apply for air-cooling, which then only targets the hottest spaces in those schools.
The average January temperature at the nearest measuring point, Maitland Visitors Centre, from 1997 until it closed in 2016 was 30.2C. The other nearby weather station, Maitland Airport, which opened in July 2016, had a mean January temperature of 32.8C this year.
But February was not taken into account, despite the mercury soaring above 35C on nine occasions in the 28-day month this year.
Bolwarra Public School P&C president Martin Nisbet said those facts were a source of disappointment for parents whose children had to endure sapping heat in the classrooms this year.
“It caused a bit of frustration,” he said. “It was very hard to communicate why to the parents.
“We qualified for [building] upgrades, but something as simple as air-conditioning is not even a consideration.
“We don’t want our children suffering going into a boiling hot summer.
The P&C has held events, applied for grants and approached businesses since they started fundraising in January, but Mr Nisbet said they were about $70,000 short.
He said if the money was not raised in time the cost to install air-conditioning later would come at a “significantly greater cost”.
“We’ve been given a very fixed time frame,” he said. “The numbers seem unrealistic.”
People who want to support the fundraising can visit www.facebook.com/bolwarrafundraisingevents/
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Sage Swinton
Sage Swinton is a news reporter who was born and bred in the Hunter. She has been with the Newcastle Herald since June 2020, and covers Newcastle council as well as other general news.
Sage Swinton is a news reporter who was born and bred in the Hunter. She has been with the Newcastle Herald since June 2020, and covers Newcastle council as well as other general news.
