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KANAB — One of Utah's southernmost schools is finally set to receive air conditioning.
Kanab High School, built in the 1980s, is the only school in the Kane County School District without air conditioning and that still uses a coal-fired boiler for heating needs — the same system it has used since its construction.
The school was selected from a pool of over 1,000 applicants as one of 24 districts across the U.S. to receive funding from the U.S. Department of Energy's federal Renew America's Schools Grant.
"We have an outdated coal boiler that is at Kanab High School, (and) we'd like to remove that boiler to provide a more accommodating learning environment for our students and also provide air conditioning," said Ben Dalton, superintendent of Kane County School District.
Through the grant, Kanab High School will receive funds totaling $5.7 million to remove the boiler and install a high-efficiency rooftop HVAC system that will provide cooling to every room of the school.
Dalton said beyond just providing an escape from the notoriously hot southern Utah, the new system will improve air quality throughout the school and be more reliable than the coal-fired boiler, in turn, extending the life of the building.
"With this aging system, we have leaking pipes and valves and boiler tubes and these rooftop units would eliminate dependencies on those older systems," Dalton said. "It's difficult to not have those systems in place, and we know that with these rooftop units, each classroom will have control of their own heating and cooling by the teacher."
This aspect will also help the school cut down on costs and be more energy-efficient by only providing heating and cooling to occupied rooms that need it, Dalton added.
Dalton said that at this point in the process, no specific project timeline or construction start date has been identified but district officials are meeting with the U.S. Department of Energy on July 20 to iron out some of those details.
Since Kanab High is the only school in the Beehive State to receive funding through the grant, Dalton said that he's thankful. Without the grant money, the district would have had to resort to placing a general obligation bond on the ballot to raise funds to upgrade the heating and cooling system, something that would've been "further down the road."
"We're really looking forward to having a highly efficient heating and cooling system at Kanab High School," Dalton said. "We really tried to approach it from improving the quality of our learning environment for our students, and we know that this federal money will help us to reach those goals."
