Family raises concerns over air conditioning issues

So we're talking about an elementary school here in Houston that has no air conditioning all while we are under a heat advisory. Leslie Delspore is joining me in the studio and it's crazy to think about this as we're in probably one of the hottest parts of the summer right now. It's crazy and it is hot. I mean that's why I'm in this one and I interviewed the person that you're getting ready to hear from in just a minute and it was hot out there so I can't even imagine sending your kid to a school with little to no AC as hot as it is outside. So this woman told me that over at Oates Elementary, that's the school that we're talking about. They have been without AC since the first day of school and she says part of the campus has AC but the other half does not so they're having to move students and teachers around. It's just a nightmare and obviously she said her biggest concern is how those conditions could be impacting both students and staff and obviously she didn't want us to identify her but she says that also teachers are having to bring in fans to help keep the classrooms cool and obviously themselves and their students but she's obviously worried about health and safety of both everyone just in the school at this time. I've been told that it's reached at least 90 degrees inside the classroom where the thermostats actually showing 90 degrees and the students are there. I do know that half of the school has AC and the other half does not have so they're trying to accommodate the kids by placing maybe like two teachers in one classroom. From what I know they're having the teachers are taking their personal fans there too on campus. I'm not sure if they were offered to from administrators like oh we have fans for you. I'm not sure as far as that goes. It's really hard on everyone there at these buildings to want to come to work, want to go to school. As educators they're encouraged to you know encourage the kids to go to school and how can they be in an environment where there's no functioning AC. Wow okay so what did HISD if anything what they have to say? So they said something but they didn't necessarily address the specifics about what's going on at Oates Elementary right so reached out to them about what's going on here but also another school which is Montgomery Elementary that we did give reports about unfortunately we could not talk to someone from that elementary school so kind of stayed focused on what's going on at Oates but they said that many of their facilities have aging HVAC systems. HISD says you know their maintenance teams always monitor and respond to HVAC problems and this is something that is being done at Oates but you know as I mentioned they are informing or asking staff to move students and staff to cooler areas inside the school and they also told me that they're working year round on preventative maintenance repairs and replacing aging equipment but you know this is not the first time that we've done this story so we are hoping to try to stay on top of this to make this become more of an issue that we can discuss and really try to bring awareness to it because again it's hot outside. Imagine sending your kid to school and it's about 80 or 90 degrees inside school. It's crazy. That other report was Neff Elementary last school year right? Yeah Neff Elementary towards the end of last year and then I've done maybe two or three stories at that school but we were constantly going and one thing I can tell you is that when I talked to parents they really touched on their students or their kids their health. Like one parent told me that you know they had to come get their child from school because their child was sick. Another child has eczema and what I was coming home with flare-ups and whatnot so you can imagine obviously the teachers. And a lot of times well they just don't get the you know it takes forever to get fixed and then people reach out to us and all of a sudden it gets fixed. So I can see why that parent would want to talk and share this story so I hope that they're all okay. Yeah definitely gonna stay on top of it. They did respond about you know kind of the general issues that are going on but hopefully we'll stay on top of it and try to get more detailed answers for next time. All right thanks Leslie.