Amid an already tumultuous start to the school year for Kanawha County, public education officials closed seven schools by noon Friday, blaming air conditioning and power issues.
The news trickled in through automated calls from the school system Friday morning; first it was announced that Ben Franklin Career Center would be closed because of no air conditioning, and South Charleston High would dismiss students at 9:30 a.m. for the same reason.
Then, the county announced that South Charleston Middle would dismiss at 9:45 a.m. because of air conditioning, and then came the announcement that Capital High would dismiss for the same reason at 11 a.m.
Afterward, a single announcement said that, because of no air conditioning and no power, George Washington High, St. Albans High and Grandview Elementary would close at noon.
The automated messages didn't explain the source of the problems. Contacted around 11 a.m., Terry Hollandsworth, maintenance director for the school system, said "I'm really, really busy."
He said the source wasn't a central computer problem and, when asked for the cause, he said "just multiple issues throughout the county."
Hollandsworth said Friday morning that he didn't have time to answer further questions, and he didn't call the Gazette-Mail back later Friday.
Kanawha schools Superintendent Ron Duerring also didn't return calls. Several Kanawha school board members said they didn't know if there was some common cause for all the issues.
American Electric Power spokeswoman Jeri Matheney said her company, which includes Appalachian Power, did identify there was a bad transformer serving South Charleston Middle and said it's expected to be fixed by Monday. She said the company replaced a transformer serving the school Thursday night, but the replacement apparently also was faulty.
However, she said AEP found that its systems weren't the cause of problems at any of the other schools that were closed.
The schools that shut down Friday weren't the only ones in Kanawha having air-conditioner issues that day or earlier this week. Matheney said Pinch Elementary was having problems - although, again, AEP wasn't the source - and someone answering the phones at Pinch said there were problems in two classrooms but the rooms weren't so hot that they were unusable.
Kevin Lilley, assistant principal for curriculum at John Adams Middle, said the district was working to fix "some temperature inconsistencies" at his school, but he said no rooms were so hot that they couldn't be used.
Lynn Davis, principal of Holz Elementary, said the district on Friday fixed the air conditioning in a classroom that had been without it since before school started, but said the air conditioning was still out in a kitchen and the library that afternoon. She said she had kept students out of the classroom with the broken air conditioning for two days because she was concerned about the heat, and the issue there was fixed because angry parents called the central office.
"The parents were very upset," Davis said.
Since late June, much of the school system's attention has been focused on two flood-damaged schools, Bridge Elementary and Elkview Middle. School officials abruptly announced last Saturday that those schools would open on Wednesday - two days later than the rest of the county - because they weren't yet ready to open.
Most Kanawha students started classes Monday, the earliest start date for any West Virginia public school system.
The June 23 floods destroyed two schools in Kanawha County - Herbert Hoover High and Clendenin Elementary.
Hollandsworth said crews had been working 12-hour days, seven days a week to make repairs at Elkview Middle and Bridge Elementary, where students from Hoover and Clendenin Elementary are starting the year, before moving to portable classrooms and, eventually, newly built schools.
Crews continued as late as last week to repair air-conditioning units at some Kanawha schools, but Hollandsworth had said parts of some schools would still be without air conditioning at the start of the school year.
"We continued to work on air-conditioning systems, while it did impact our time spent on preventive maintenance," Hollandsworth wrote in an email to the Gazette-Mail last week. "We did continue with repairs. There will be some rooms without AC in some of the schools. But whole schools will not be without AC."
"I told you this would happen," Kanawha school board member Pete Thaw said Friday.
He blamed the issue on the heat, coupled with inadequate maintenance, and said enough hadn't been done to fix the air-conditioning systems despite the district spending millions of dollars to upgrade them over the past several years.
In December, Thaw said the school system would be in trouble if there were an August heat wave, saying its air conditioning is "far from being in good shape." He was outvoted 4-1 at that board meeting in the vote to approve this school year's calendar.
But Thaw, when he was president of the board, also campaigned against the district's 2013 effort to raise excess levy property-tax revenue. He said Friday that more money would just lead his fellow board members to approve more pay increases for school administrators, like the more than $11,700 in raises they approved for high school principals in December 2014.
Fellow board member Becky Jordon, who said September has had hotter temperatures than August for the past several years, said starting school in early August isn't about moving all of Kanawha toward year-round schooling, as Thaw alleges it is, but about ending the first semester before winter break.
"Finals used to be in January," Jordon said. "We want to end it at Christmas, so children don't have to think about school and you can enjoy your family time and start fresh."
The calendar also provides two weeks off around Christmas.
Jordon said she feels the air-conditioning failures are partly due to the district instead - properly - focusing on the bigger needs of the flood-impacted schools along the Elk River.
"We need to have long-term conversations about what we need to do to make sure these issues aren't occurring every year," said Ric Cavender, who joined the board last month.
He said that while he's not 100 percent against delaying the start date for classes, he's not convinced that would solve all the air-conditioning issues. He said he's looking through the district's budget to find funding gaps.
"I'm fairly certain that we're going to have to find new money to install new HVAC [heating, ventilation and air-conditioning] systems," Cavender said.
He said that could include reallocation of money, new grant funding, an excess levy increase and other possibilities.
Staff writer Lori Kersey contributed to this report.
Reach Ryan Quinn at ryan.quinn@wvgazettemail.com, facebook.com/ryanedwinquinn, 304-348-1254 or follow @RyanEQuinn on Twitter.