While students were on summer vacation, Menlo’s Operations team installed air conditioning in the CADC, new carpets in classrooms and made several other changes. The operations team also plans to install air conditioning in the A and B buildings next summer.

Amrit Chima, Menlo’s Director of Operations said the changes to the carpets around campus were done to make them more aesthetically pleasing. While working on the carpeting, the operations team also repainted classrooms’ walls and redid the ceiling tiles in second-floor classrooms, simultaneously switching out fluorescent lights for LED bulbs that reduce the school’s energy consumption. “We also replaced the acoustic panels in the second-floor classrooms to create better sound absorption and also just to look aesthetically more pleasing,” Chima said. 

Photography teacher and Yearbook Advisor Ryan Bowden, whose classroom is on the second floor of the CADC, was excited to have air conditioning in his classroom. 

Bowden said that, on occasion, his classroom would overheat prior to the AC installations. Bowden said the heat occasionally prevented him from comfortably teaching inside the CADC, to the point that he would move his class outside, an inconvenience to his students working on photo editing. 

However, Bowden says the system has not been working properly, causing his classroom to overheat. Bowden said the operations team has brought in fans and even a swamp cooler, but he still feels disappointed that his students have to learn in the heat. “I think it’s important that the students, whether they’re here in the creative arts building or they’re over in the upper school area [or] classroom area, that everyone can […] learn in comfortable environments,” Bowden said.

The CADC, built in 2012, was designed to be environmentally sustainable with its materials, design and air flow. In order to be certified by the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) as eco-friendly, the building has to meet a set of standards that, due to the amount of energy required by the new AC, are no longer attainable.“While [the CADC is] no longer technically LEED certified, it is still cooling in the most efficient way possible while providing [a] safer learning space for all of our students,” Leonard said.