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Hancock County School District declares emergency closure after Hancock High chiller fails
Summary
The Hancock County School Board declared an emergency closure for Hancock High School on Sept. 29 after a 20-year-old HVAC chiller failed. Board members approved declarations and added emergency agenda items to cover repair or replacement costs; staff said parts have been ordered and temporary fixes are underway.
The Hancock County School District Board of Trustees on Oct. 2 declared an emergency closure for Hancock High School on Sept. 29 after a failure of a decades-old HVAC chiller, and added an emergency agenda item to cover repair or replacement costs.
The board voted to declare the Sept. 29 closure and later approved adding an agenda item “declaration of emergency for costs associated with the replacement or repair of the chiller at Hancock High School,” which the board listed as a new item for consideration. The motions passed after members were asked, “Is anyone opposed? All in favor? Motion carries.”
During the construction manager’s report, the district’s construction manager described the problem as a failure of “the machine that we have been running on,” noting the unit is about 20 years old and that staff and vendor representatives are working on parts and repairs. “They have parts that they're sending us now that they have pulled off of other machines so that we can try and get going,” the construction manager said. He added that parts have been ordered for the district’s other chiller and that the district is exploring replacement options to avoid repeated failures.
Superintendent-level staff and maintenance personnel asked vendors for expedited assistance because the district had been operating the remaining machine heavily while attempting to remedy earlier issues with the other unit. The board approved emergency actions to enable immediate procurement or repair work; no specific contract amounts or vendor names were announced at the meeting.
The board also scheduled follow-up work between district staff and vendor representatives to pursue repairs and longer-term replacement options. No additional formal votes on specific repair contracts were recorded in the public minutes during the meeting.
The construction manager’s account of ongoing repairs and the board’s emergency declarations were discussed during the construction manager’s report and the agenda-change portion of the meeting.
No timeline for full restoration of both chillers was given at the meeting. The board added the chiller repair/replacement emergency as item 57 on the agenda and approved the minutes and consent items that included the emergency declarations.
