How heating and cooling has had an effect on RHS

The older heating and cooling system can’t keep up in extreme temperatures.

Photo by Jeff Nusser

English teacher Jeff Nusser’s classroom had a temperature reading of 79 degrees on a warm day last June.

Rogers High School’s air conditioning had been malfunctioning in September when the weather was unusually warm. At one point, it was ridiculously hot in classrooms, and sometimes even extremely cold, and these conditions had an effect on students. Students said that the heat affected them in many ways.

“When it gets hot, I have a hard time learning, because when I am hot it makes me uncomfortable and when I am uncomfortable it is hard to pay attention,” sophomore Aidan Horsley said.

Sophomore Morcos Corales agrees: “When it is hot, I get angrier fast, and I don’t focus.”

Custodian Gonzalo Santoyo said that most of the time, there isn’t trouble with the heating and cooling system.

“People don’t really complain to me directly, but I have heard complaints in the past,” Santoyo said.

Spanish teacher Jamie Whitley, who teaches in a portable, said, “If it’s hot outside the thermometer will adjust to it and make it cold in here but then if it’s cold outside then the thermometer will make it cold but sometimes it messes up and goes off the temperature inside and it will make it cold because it was hot in here.”

Santoyo doesn’t know if or when Rogers will be getting improved heating and cooling, “but most likely we are in the future,” he said.