MINOOKA – While the mild start-of-the-school-year temperatures haven’t required the full use of Minooka Community HIgh School’s new air conditioning units, teachers, students and administrators are still seeing a difference.

For years, the school has been a mix of air conditioned and non-air conditioned classrooms, depending on when the wing in which they are located was built.

Melissa Hoffart has been teaching at MCHS off and on since 1991, and has spent most of the time in non-air conditioned classrooms.

“I think there is a major difference with the added air conditioning,” Hoffart said. “Classroom time was wasted while students discussed the hot temperatures.”

She said she can remember a time when the temperatures would reach the 80s and the school would have early dismissal.

“The students would come in and ask what the weather was going to be for the day, hoping they would get out early,” she said. “This year, with the new air conditioning, the temperatures have not come up one time in my classroom.”

Hoffart said the worst part was when a student left one of the air conditioned classrooms and entered a non-air conditioned one, making it feel even warmer.

Last year, when South Campus opened – giving Central Campus students more room – teachers were told they could take their classes to a cooler room if one was available.

“You can’t just pick up a science lab and move it,” Hoffart noted.

Kids didn’t always complain about the hot classrooms.

Current school board member Bruce Miller can recall heat being an issue when he attended MCHS in the 1970s.

“I practiced football twice a day and I was always hot,” he said. “Of course, I didn’t have air conditioning at home either, so we were accustomed to it.”

Nevertheless, Miller was supportive of the addition of air conditioning coils as mandatory life/safety work was being completed this summer.

“I think it’s beneficial to the learning environment,” Miller said.

Dr. Dave Middleton, superintendent of District 111, said they had to change unit ventilators as part of the life/safety work being done, so the cost savings of adding air conditioning at the same time versus a later date made it the logical thing to do.

“Now was the time to buy the chilled water coils,” he said. “The majority of the school is now air conditioned.”

He said the air conditioning came to $1.3 million.

Alex Szymanski, a senior at MCHS, said it makes the day a lot easier without the heat of the afternoons.

“I used to avoid the social studies hall because of the heat,” she said. “As a student, I think it was money well spent.”