JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2013 Parents and students have been sounding the alarm since the first day of school: broken and failing air conditioning in Duval County classrooms during a heat wave.<\/p>\n
The problem came to a head Wednesday morning when smoke from a broken air-handler motor forced an early evacuation at Crown Point Elementary School. About 20 students who had already been dropped off were safely relocated to Mandarin Middle School, according to Tatyana Wimberly, DCPS Chief Communications Officer.<\/p>\n
But parents say the problem is much bigger than one school.<\/p>\n
One Crown Point parent told News4JAX her fourth-grade son has been without air conditioning since the first day of school \u2014 last Monday.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s been very uncomfortable. He\u2019s breathing more heavily. He has asthma,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd it\u2019s been, apparently, in the 90s in their classroom.\u201d<\/p>\n
News4JAX has received multiple tips, calls, and emails from parents reporting AC failures across the district \u2014 including at Stanton College Prep, Westview K-8, and Riverside High School.<\/p>\n
Jacaelah Magee, a junior at Riverside High School, described what it feels like inside her classroom.<\/p>\n
\u201cConsidering it\u2019s like 100 degrees on a daily basis, I would say like 110, 111,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s like sweating in class. If there\u2019s a bunch of people with fans \u2014 electric and folding \u2014 it\u2019s really hot to the point it\u2019s unbearable.\u201d<\/p>\n
News4JAX asked DCPS about the AC situation at three of the schools parents flagged. The answers were different for each one.<\/p>\n
Westview K-8:\u00a0A chiller malfunctioned Monday, knocking out air conditioning in several classrooms. District maintenance crews resolved the issue Monday afternoon. ESE and CSS classrooms were not affected.<\/p>\n
Riverside High School:\u00a0An electrical issue caused the outage. The school says all AC units are now back online and functioning normally. As a proactive measure this past summer, the school replaced the chiller in the impacted building.<\/p>\n
Stanton College Prep:\u00a0The situation is less resolved. In a letter to families this week, Principal Majova-Seane wrote:\u00a0\u201cWe have been informed that the maintenance team will be making its way to our school to inspect and address our chillers.\u201d\u00a0As of this week, families were still waiting for that visit.<\/p>\n
Even at schools where the district says repairs have been made, some parents say they are not convinced the problem is fully behind them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey should be safe. The environment should be comfortable,\u201d said parent Shavon Good. \u201cHow are they supposed to concentrate when they\u2019re worried about sweating and being hot?\u201d<\/p>\n
Good said she was prepared to keep her daughter home until the issue is fixed.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe would be missing school until the problem would be fixed, which means she\u2019s missing her education and her ability to learn,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
News4JAX asked DCPS Deputy Superintendent Corey Wright what the district\u2019s long-term plan is to address the ongoing AC failures, particularly during the current heat wave.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would say that our chief operations officer would be the right person to address the long-term plan. I know there is one. I don\u2019t have the specifics of that at the moment,\u201d Wright said. \u201cBut to our families \u2014 our priority is to have an educational learning environment that\u2019s appropriate for students, which includes air conditioning.\u201d<\/p>\n
What\u2019s next<\/p>\n
Thursday afternoon, the district said following a thorough inspection of the Crown Point Elementary building, an independent external vendor confirmed that the school is safe to reopen beginning Friday. <\/p>\n
Below is the follow-up communication that the principal shared with her families:<\/p>\n
\u201cThank you for your patience, understanding, and support today. I know this morning\u2019s events were unexpected, and I am grateful for the calm and cooperation you showed as we worked to ensure the safety of our students and staff.<\/p>\n
I want to reassure you that Crown Point Elementary has been thoroughly inspected by our district maintenance teams and an independent external vendor, and the building has been determined to be safe.<\/p>\n
The inspection confirmed that there was no fire.\u00a0The smoke resulted from a malfunction involving an air fan, and the appropriate repairs have been completed.<\/p>\n
I am also pleased to confirm that school is scheduled to operate as normal tomorrow, Friday, at Crown Point Elementary.<\/p>\n
Thank you again for your patience and for entrusting us with your children. The safety and well-being of our students and staff will always be our highest priority.”<\/p>\n
Katie O\u2019Connell Principal, Crown Point Elementary<\/p>\n
DCPS is expected to hold a press conference Thursday afternoon, where officials say they plan to provide more details on their long-term solution to the district-wide AC problems.<\/p>\n
News4JAX will be there and will update this story as more information becomes available.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by WJXT News4JAX – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2013 Parents and students have been sounding the alarm since the first day of school: broken…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":377419,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[54444,1040,48092,116,118,117],"class_list":["post-377418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-ac","tag-dcps","tag-duval-county-schools","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=377418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377418\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/377419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}