I would put tomorrow's chances at 50/50.

I left Poly a little before you wrote this entry. The boiler had been worked on and was pumping maybe at 50% capacity and was intermittent at best.

I mean if this gets fixed for tomorrow that will be wonderful, but right now I would put it at 50/50

Poly teacher: Do you know if you're referring to the second, smaller boiler (which Keith Scroggins said is working but not very well) or the large, primary boiler (which supposedly wasn't working at all but should be once a new part is installed this afternoon)?

This is the situation as I know it.

You are right that 2/4 are working, the large one that didn't really run at 100% to begin with, and the smaller one.

Now, from what I know they attempted to "resurrect" the larger one that cut out over the weekend. And from the person that I talked to who saw said it was still leaking a substantial amount of water.

Now, that may have been an effort to get it running without the part. I heard about that yesterday. If the part gets put in this evening, awesome we have classes tomorrow.

But this morning at Poly the heaters were emitting heat, but it was luke warm at best. People were characterizing it as being at 50% capacity. The hallways were still very cold.

Heat in the building has been an issue all year as the big boiler is really about to give up the ghost it seems.

These are issues that older buildings face, so it is not really the indictment of the system that I am sure some are going to make it seem to be.

Just spoke with one of my colleagues who is there working with students - yes Poly students showed up on cold-day to work on projects - and he said that the building is "cool, but not cold".

he said there is good heat but it comes and goes. So long as the boiler doesn't fail again he expects us to be in session tomorrow.

So take that for what it is worth.

I would say that the air coming out in my room was "not cold" certainly not warm; my room thermometer registered 49.

Yeah that is pretty much what my dept. head said.

Cool, but not cold - not warm either.

And yet...school was closed for two days. I am most frustrated with the complete disorgnization in notifying students of the closures. Hundreds were stranded on Tuesday because notice was not given until the students came for class! The Principal and school system simply must do a better job, esp. this late in the school year. No notice on the web site, no post to radio, nothing.

Tuesday was a fluke.

But Lauraville Mom, it was posted on WBAL's website at 6AM and it was on WBAL's crawl by 6:15

But, school officials DID know at least over the weekend because they were there with a number of activities with students (Dance on Sunday, dance competition) I thought the reaction on Tues AM was slow; people from engineering were in the building measuring Temps at 6:30-- no decision until way after the 8AM bell ring

To clarify: it was posted on Wednesday, but not Tuesday.

Funny, my schools halls are fridged at best. Oh wait we're a zone so who cares

I was in the Poly Library for a Family and Community Engagement Training from5-7 tonight. Great meeting. Great concept.Inspiring presentations! Freezing temp!! Good luck tomorrow. Sara, have you been covering the new family and community engagement regs and policies? Would like to hear more from various perspectives.

Yeah, I don't know of a single heater that actually pumps out *heat* at Thurgood Marshall. No matter the temperature in my room, the heater pumps out a solid blast of middle cold to very cold air. Many teachers at TMHS teach with coats on watching students in their jackets & hoodies. Hard to justify telling a student to take his hat off when he has to sit still in a 50 degree classroom 90 minutes at a time 4 times a day. 50 degrees, of course, being a good day.

But Stu's right, we're a zone school so it's no big deal... we have more important topics to face, like administrators who harass staff members when union grievances are filed instead of trying to actually follow the contract... you know... teacher stuff.

The notification on Tuesday morning came out at 9am, the notification on Wed came out by 5:30am. This meant that on Tuesday every kid went to school and then had to go home and if parents were doing the transport this meant two trips round trips in the space of an hour.

As far as special treatment for Poly/Western vs zoned, sorry I'm not seeing it. Closing a school at the last second, having a heating system that hasn't worked right for the whole year, continual frigid classes and halls...maybe it's like that at other schools, but its hard to imagine it's that Poly/Western is getting some sort of preferential treatment.

Stu, talk to your principle.

There have been plenty of zones that have closed due to heat problems this year.

And Poly has operated in very cold conditions this winter as well. This is Poly's first day off because the boilers were at zero operation.

If there is no school tomorrow then friday is a lost day. I highly doubt many people will show up. And if the students are made to go to school while the classrooms are 40-some degrees then many students won't be very happy. Does anyone know the temperature requirements in the school for it to stay open?

A notice should have been posted on the BCPS as well as the Poly web sites. After all, there more than a few of us who don't have TVs, or we don't wait for radio to announce. Get going to the 21st century, Poly, and use the Web!

The advice to "talk to your principal" made me laugh. Last year TMHS had new heaters installed, we were all pretty excited. Almost immediately after the construction crew left, the heaters stopped pumping heat.

The principal knows, the area office knows, the engineering dept. knows... they've all been notified multiple times by multiple staff members. Lets not sit here and pretend city wide school's don't get preferential treatment.

There has already been calls for civility on some other posts, but I'll second it here.

Personally I think the state (that is Erlich, O'Malley, Grasmick and the rest) does a good enough job talking bad about (and doing bad to) Baltimore's schools that the community of those of us who are actually involved (parents, students, teachers, administrators) in any school (zoned, charter, magnet) don't really need to be throwing stones at each other. I find this type of talk, which seems to pop up on this blog all the time, very depressing.

It's a pretty strange point by Brandon. If citywide schools are treated better, why are the heaters allowed to break and for school to be canceled? These buildings are very old - I'd guess City College has the oldest building in the district, or close to it - and falling apart. We seem to have heating problems every single year. I'm not sure how that suggests preferential treatment.

Throughout the district, schools are closed because of heating problems - zone, citywide, and charter - from time to time. If indeed your school is without heat, and you're teaching children in 30-40 degree weather, and you and the children are being allowed to do that, then, yes, you might have a beef about preferential treatment because your school wasn't closed down when other schools (zone, citywide, charter) around the system are for the same problem. But that is how cold it was at City this year, which is why the school was shut down for a bit earlier this year to fix the decrepit heaters. The same thing happen two years ago, when we were out for almost a whole week because of no heat. I don't think having terrible heaters that completely break every other year shows any sort of preferential treatment, though.

I agree with BCPSS Parent... we're all in this together.

What I got from Brandon's comment is that Poly's heaters broke, and it made the blog and they shut the school down to fix the problem, whereas other schools go through that kind of stuff all the time with no mention or no possible solutions and it seems like nobody really cares.

If this blog was meant to be a cheerleader site, then I was completely misinformed. Everything is not great and to pretend otherwise is ignorant.

How can you say there's no mention? Throughout the winter, I listened to NPR every morning and heard of several schools being closed for lack of heating, throughout the winter. When City College was closed earlier this year, in fact, it wasn't reported on NPR, but I've heard several other schools mentioned on there as having been closed for lack of heating.

Maybe there wasn't a blog posting of each of the heating problems in the city schools (though I do remember at least one for a zone elementary school with a broken heater, and there wasn't a blog posting, as far as I could tell, when City College's heaters stopped working this winter), but that could simply be because no one emailed the story in to Sara.

Do you really have evidence of schools teaching in sub-40 degree chill because heaters aren't working, and no one caring or doing anything about it? If so, that should definitely be reported. It seems the school system has been pretty active in shutting down schools with this degree of frigidity and getting the heaters fixed right away, regardless of the status of the school.

@Steph - If you read the post and comments you'll see that the problem is not fixed. There's some sort of patched together make-shift solution that has allowed the school to open after being shut down for two days - pretty standard for what's happened at other school.

As far as I'm concerned, constructive discussions that identify problems and offer solutions are great. Whining about how this type of school - citywide, charter, transformation - gets all the breaks is not particularly helpful in any way that I can think of.

A study was done about a year ago by a think tank group that found the ability to gripe and kevtch about work during workplace hours actually lead to productive discussions and problem solving. I think that this blog does that for teachers and others who do not have that opportunity and/or space during the school day for such discussions to occur. Granted face to face interaction would be better but most teachers are not in a position to do so on a regular basis. Hurray for a place where teachers and others can share thoughts!!!!!!!!!!!!

Fixed? I think not - closed again. With notice 10 min before it's time to go out the door. Ten minutes before is better than 10 min. after.

I'm afraid I either miswrote or have been misread. I don't want my school to close, if I was that desperate for a day off I'd take a sick day. I enjoy teaching, I'd just rather do it in a heated room. I feel for the staff at any school that closes or stays open for heat... My hostility isn't to the magnet school's and their preferential treatment (which does exist, but I digress)... My hostility is towards the city's inability to fix any of our schools, and I just wish the issue was presented as a system-wide problem... not a problem of one otherwise well off school.

I'm with a parent on this. It might be more prudent for teachers to find a private blogspace in which to whine. I realize that there are serious issues. (Those same issues would be why I lived in the county until my kids were out of school) However, as a taxpayer, I'm just not feelin' the love, having read the "it's not fair, I have to teach on the day before Thanksgiving" and "I shouldn't have to teach if the counties schools are closed for snow"

I have a grandchild in the city schools. These teacher complaints are running together. If this is a private, teacher-only vent blog, then it needs to be re-named and re-purposed.

Eve, I agree with you to a point. There is a difference between whining about trivia and discussing issues that affect everyone and that teachers can never discuss publically. We are the last to ever have a voice and yet we are the most invested in the students except their families. Teachers have insights and persepectives that parents and community members may want to know as we are so close to the daily lives of the children. So, I am a proponent of civility,but I do want to hear the views of all involved in the system;parents, teachers, support staff, students, and administrators.(who have previously dominated all information given to the "public") AAA seems eager to have a more open dialogue.BTW, most teachers are also tax payers, parents of students, and community members!

Can anyone explain to me why a school so centered around technology doesn't have the ability to keep their website updated with actual new information on a regular basis. I agree that all of this information should have been posted on the BPI website. Also why are teachers not using the blackboard system that the school system pays for to keep students updated on classes. This would be much less of an issue if the teachers had the ability to give assignments over the web and stay in touch with students. I have some teachers who don't seem to know how to use a computer or even a calculator. Lets try and use the wonderful world of technology.

@KG - I'm guessing that that the website is out of date because they don't have the staff that has the time and/or training to perform the task. As far as TSS goes (the portal program) I think that's also a matter of time, training and the general difficulty of using this program on the teachers' part. I base this opinion on the many comments you'll see about TSS on this blog - look at the request for questions for Dr. Alonso here and even more here. As far as BPI's website, maybe if you're a parent that's good at website management you could call the school and see if they could use help in keeping it up to date (as opposed to giving them a hard time about how out of date it is), otherwise, the city website seems to be pretty good about closings if that's the information your missing.

Hi,

You have got a pleasant blog with informative articles. Many thanks for being so informative about steam boilers.