The heat wasn’t on at Citadel High yesterday, resulting in the school being shut down for the day to students and staff.
Citadel is kept warm during the colder months through a steam-heating system from the neighbouring QEII Health Sciences Centre, but earlier this year the province’s Department of Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal identified issues with a pipeline that brings heat from the hospital to the school.
Work to fix the problem has been on-going since May, with the final repairs — the actual replacing of the piping — expected to be complete by sometime next week.
With warm temperatures since the work began, heat wasn’t a problem at Citadel. But that changed yesterday when staff arrived in the morning and temperatures weren’t “conducive to learning,” said Halifax Regional School Board spokesman Doug Hadley.
“The building this morning was in the low-to-mid 50s F,” he said.
Hadley said yesterday the board was working with the province in hopes of getting an external boiler set up in the school’s hot-water tank to generate heat throughout the building until the pipeline is up and running again.
He announced last night that Citadel High would re-open today for the 1,350 students at the school, which opened in 2007.
