Maryland spent $1B renovating Baltimore schools. Fixing the heat could add millions.

Late one Saturday night in February, as temperatures in Baltimore dropped below 15 degrees, Arlington Elementary School’s heat was malfunctioning.

The state-of-the-art heating system, part of a $41 million renovation completed in 2020, had been on the fritz for days, leaving one part of the building sweltering and the other frigid.

But that night, the sprinkler system froze and a pipe burst in the art room. Water came raining down on the art supplies and the cabinets, filling the floor, the hall and seven classrooms. Between snow days, heating issues and the burst pipe, students at the Northwest Baltimore school were home for nearly two weeks.

Arlington is one of 22 Baltimore City public schools renovated with a proprietary heating and air conditioning system that’s proven temperamental and expensive to fix. School system staff can’t work on the specialized systems, which were chosen for their energy efficiency, leading to repair costs of at least $2 million a year. Replacing the system at Arlington, as one engineering firm recommended, could run as much as $12 million.

What to do about the problem-plagued systems is still being debated by several state and city agencies.

The variable refrigerant flow (VRF) systems were installed under the 21st Century School Buildings Program, a $1 billion effort to modernize aging facilities that began in 2013.

At the time, lawmakers did not trust that city schools had the capacity to build or renovate about 30 schools in a decade. They put the Maryland Stadium Authority in charge of construction.

The school system, the stadium authority, the city and the Interagency Commission on School Construction, or IAC, worked together on the 21st Century Schools program.

When construction began, VRF systems were new, and “people were excited about them as energy efficient,” said Alison Perkins-Cohen, chief of staff for city schools. But the city began having issues with the systems soon after, as did other schools around the state. As many as 100 Maryland schools use VRF for heating and cooling.

After five years of issues, the city hired a third-party engineering firm to analyze how to solve the problems at two schools, said Lynette Washington, city schools’ chief operating officer. The studies concluded that the system at Arlington had not been installed properly and that it would be best to replace it with a more conventional system.

No city or state agency has said it is solely responsible for fixing the problem.

The IAC said in an email that its role was limited to reviewing and approving the general scope of the projects but not the design details.

City school officials declined to lay blame for the problems on anyone, saying they were working with their partners to figure out solutions.

The Maryland Stadium Authority declined requests for an interview and released a statement indicating that it was aware of mechanical problems involving the VRF systems installed in some schools.

The statement went on to say that the stadium authority and other agencies involved in overseeing the construction reviewed the Baltimore City schools’ independent analysis and concluded that a more comprehensive study is needed to understand the scope of the challenges in the 21st Century Schools program.

The last two city schools the stadium authority is building — Frederick Douglass High School and Commodore John Rodgers Elementary/Middle School — will not have VRF systems.

Washington said that schools being built by the school system are all getting conventional HVAC systems, which are more expensive but last longer and can be worked on by school system engineers.

City schools officials “reached out to some of our counterparts in other parts of the state who may be using VRF systems,” Washington said. “Many of them are saying they don’t work well in schools.”

Jonathan Collins, the director of mechanical services and engineering for Baltimore City Public Schools, said his staff has discussed the VRF issues with other school systems that are having the same problems.

Baltimore County Public Schools recently contracted a company to replace a VRF system in Lyons Mill Elementary, which was built in 2015. A school system spokesperson said the school system no longer uses VRF systems in new construction.

Collins said the issues in city schools are recurring and expensive. The school system spent $100,000 to repair one problem and then had to return several months later to fix it again. The heating and air conditioning systems at Arlington and other schools began to be problematic just months after the schools opened, said Collins, who has a long list of issues written in a spiral notebook.

One very hot day shortly after reopening the renovated school, Arlington dismissed students early because the air conditioning couldn’t keep up with the heat, said Principal Emily Hunter. The school was constructed with windows that don’t open, so there was no way to cool the school down.

The most recent problems at Arlington started during January’s cold snap, when part of the building was running the heating system too hot and the other side too cold. School system personnel cannot work on the proprietary VRF systems, so they called a contractor who was backed up with work and couldn’t get out for three or four days.

Arlington’s staff had prepared for the possibility of having to teach virtually when the snowstorm hit, Hunter said. So when the heat couldn’t be regulated, they continued to teach virtually. The staff stayed at school and handed out laptops to families who needed them. They delivered packets of work to others.

Then the pipe burst. Alarms went off, notifying school police, and within an hour the water was turned off.

Because the flooding was stopped quickly and the crews were on the scene ripping out the saturated drywall the next day, there wasn’t time for mold to start forming, Collins said. Within two days, school crews had replaced drywall and repainted, just as the contractor was getting there to deal with the heating issues.

In a way, Hunter said, the sprinkler heads rupturing didn’t actually extend the time that students were out of school. She had been dealing with so many heating issues that she felt numb.

“And then this happens,” she said. “And it was just like, really?”

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