School considers repairing 52-year-old gym windows

The gym grew hot as crowds of students streamed into the enclosure during the Homecoming dance on Oct. 1. In the oppressively sultry atmosphere, one girl suddenly felt ill. An hour later, she was riding in an ambulance on her way to the hospital.

Although the exact cause of her ailment is unknown, the heat generated during the dance may have been a factor.

“I think it would definitely help keep it cooler in there,” said the girl, who asked The Falcon to remain anonymous. “I don’t know if that’s what set off my particular attack, but I think the heat is not good for anyone really.”

In an attempt to increase ventilation, the administration is looking at ways to improve the condition of the gym’s windows.

“We do what we can,” assistant principal Kevin Mount said. “We open the front doors, we open the back doors, but if we could open the windows, it certainly would help to ventilate that room.”

Maintenance supervisor Brian Moran agrees that the 52-year-old windows need some fixing.

“Those are our original windows, when the school was built in 1959, so the mechanism that opens the windows in many cases does not function properly,” Moran said.

As a result, the windows can also be considered a safety hazard.

“We’ve had a couple of cases when the actual window fell on the outside of the building as we opened them up,” Moran said.

In order to prevent this hazard, the maintenance crew decided to screw the problematic windows shut. However, of the remaining windows, only about half still function, according to Moran.

The in-house maintenance team will attempt to fix as many of the existing windows as possible. One solution involves using the existing parts of certain windows to fix others.

“If we have to take some parts from one section of windows to make another section operate, we’ll do that, so at least some sections can open up,” Moran said.

Another option is to buy the necessary hardware for window repair. However, Moran worries that replacement parts could be obsolete and hard to find. The school is willing to turn to an outside source to rebuild the windows if obtaining the materials proves too difficult, Moran said.

“We’ll be able to repair some of them, but we might need to use the outside resources of a company if we can’t fabricate or find parts,” Moran said. “They’re 52-year-old mechanisms. They have perhaps reached the end of their lifespan.”

The process of repairing the windows has already begun; maintenance members are inspecting the faulty mechanisms, deciding on the best course of action and trying to come up with a reasonable cost estimate. But the window issue is only one among many others on the list of tasks for the tight-budgeted school.

“We’d like to get those things fixed, but that kind of work, now that basketball season is starting, might be better left for a break or a vacation,” Mount said. “It’s hard to do large construction projects on an area that is used so frequently.”