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New SAISD report says 20 years of problems resulted in January heating system crisis

The district did not have a proper plan when heating outages began mounting, the report concludes.

SAN ANTONIO — San Antonio ISD has released a report detailing why the district experienced system-wide heating system failures that caused it to shut down nearly all campuses during freezing conditions in January. 

The report, discussed and accepted by the board of trustees Monday, found the that issues affecting HVAC system's "did not arise overnight, but rather evolved over decades." It states SAISD, the third-biggest district in the city, didn't budget for ongoing maintenance, didn't appropriately maintain its heating and cooling systems, and didn't develop adequate crisis management plans for severe weather events. 

The mismanagement goes back 20 years, the report says. 

The report also blamed underfunding of Texas public schools as a factor in keeping up aging building infrastructure, and includes recommendations to prevent another failure in the future. 

Those recommendations range from future bonds to have a set amount for addressing district infrastructure investment to Superintendent Jaime Aquino conducting a study of excess facility capacity within the district. The report also calls for plans to buy new equipment that would allow the district to "provide real-time, standardized and comprehensive data on HVAC hardware across all school facilities."

"In the end, it is not about a broken HVAC system," Trustee Leticia Ozuna is quoted as saying in an SAISD release. "It is about ensuring we have good learning environments for all students."

At least two key administrators – the deputy superintendent and the chief of operations – resigned from SAISD in the fallout of the system failures

For the full 38-page report, click here. 

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