When students began the new academic year at Queen Palmer Elementary School last week, they may have noticed a difference in the atmosphere from just a few months before. The staff members at the District 11 school certainly felt it and were grateful for the change. “Oh, my gosh,” said Adita Karges, who has been teaching at Queen Palmer for six years.
“It’s a huge difference.” The “huge difference” was the presence of air conditioning, installed over summer break, for the first time since the building was erected. When the grade school was built, it was probably considered state-of-the-art, said principal Christina Butcher.
“And it’s still a beautiful building,” Butcher noted. But the school opened its doors in 1948, and a facilities upgrade was long overdue. “This is going to be a game changer for our students,” the principal said.
“They’re going to be in a welcoming learning environment that not only allows the teachers to teach at a high level, but also to keep the students alert and focused.” The air conditioning, installed by MTech Mechanical, was one of several recent projects aimed at improving the school’s environment, inside and out, according to District 11 spokeswoman Jessica Wise. “We’ve been trying to activate the outside spaces,” said Wise, who listed an outdoor play area and artificial turf field among the improvements.
“Now, this continues into the interior. When kids are playing outside, getting all hot and sweaty, you don’t want them to escalate that by going into a hot building that’s not conducive to learning.” The fact that Queen Palmer is a “late start” school made the lack of air conditioning more problematic, because the building would be warm at the outset of the school day and grow more and more uncomfortable as the day progressed, staff members said.
“We would turn the blinds down, and we’d dim the lights, but there’s no substitute for air conditioning,” Karges said. “It’s really going to be impactful. It already is.
” MTech, a Colorado-based contractor, installed more than 20 air conditioning units over the summer, including rooftop condensers, according to project manager Tyler Corey. “The message that District 11 really drove home, when we met with them, was how important this was for the kids,” Corey said at a recent Queen Palmer open house. “We were hoping the open house would be on a 95-degree day, so we could show it off.
But everyone can tell the difference.” A few years ago, there had been conversations among the District 11 administration and school board about closing Queen Palmer and nearby Taylor elementary schools and moving both student bodies into the Galileo Middle School building, said Board of Education President Parth Melpakam. But that plan hinged upon the approval of a proposed $350 million bond that would have been used to update, renovate and rebuild the infrastructure of Colorado Springs’ oldest school district.
The 2021 ballot measure failed by just 11 votes . “(The restructuring) was a conversation with a different board, and a different superintendent,” Melpakam said. “Since Superintendent (Michael) Gaal came in, there has been no conversation about closing Queen Palmer.
We are reinvesting in the school, its staff, and its students.” The introduction of air conditioning into Queen Palmer classrooms and offices represents just one of more than 100 capital improvements in the district since the 2023-2024 school year ended, Wise said. “We’ve got new things happening at just about every school in the district,” she said.
Karges and several other Queen Palmer staff members said the new air conditioning will provide a measure of comfort for students and educators alike, allowing them to fully concentrate on teaching and learning. “In August and early September, on really hot days, the teachers would get sweaty and the kids would get groggy,” Karges said. “(The air conditioning) has already made a big difference.
We’re very excited and grateful.”.
