Over the past few years, Naperville North has experienced temperature fluctuations due to the age of the school’s HVAC system. According to NNHS Principal, Jay Wachtel, during the 2026 summer, Naperville North is getting roughly $2 million dollars to work on the HVAC systems in the most problematic areas.
These temperature changes have caused countless disruptions to learning which has caused many students and faculty to ask the same question: How come this problem hasn’t been fixed yet? According to Wachtel the fix had been on the to-do list for a very long time, but the school board saw more pressing issues. The mobiles needed to be removed due to termite problems, and they were seriously outdated. Then the electric buses were bought, and the school needed to expand the bus lot for charging stations. Then there was water retention and the new turf field that were put in for equity reasons between the two 203 high schools, and the structural problems by the weight room. All of these necessary changes added up so fast that the school’s crazy temperature issues became an afterthought. Wachtel commented on how he hopes delays of problems this big won’t happen in the future.
“I think they’re [the district 203 school board] hoping to get to a point where they could be more proactive about all that stuff, but we’re just not there yet,” Wachtel said.
Now that this problem seems to have a solution on the way, teachers have expressed excitement to finally have their classrooms sit at comfortable temperatures again. Naperville North Language Arts teacher, Wanjugu Bukusi, experienced a time when her classroom temperature soared up to 90° F (32.2° C) just one week after she had notified the school that the temperatures were too cold. She had been teaching at NNHS since before covid and had never experienced such temperature extremes. Additionally, Naperville North ASL teacher, Samantha Cermak, has experienced constant fluctuations in room temperature since she started working at NNHS in 2022. She claimed that it’s hard for students to learn and for herself to teach when it’s so cold.
“The temperature fluctuations between rooms are so intense that it makes it difficult… one room you have to wear a hoodie and a blanket, and another is 80 degrees,” Cermak said.
