Even as they begin clearing snow from parking lots and sidewalks, school officials are trying to prepare for the next weather event: extreme cold.

A prolonged period of subfreezing temperatures can be difficult on buildings with aging pipes and heating systems, and Maryland has plenty of them.

School systems in the region haven’t reported problems yet, but said they will be monitoring their buildings.

Alex Donahue, the executive director of the state’s Interagency Commission on School Construction, said the key to avoiding cold-related damage is to have a significant number of staff in schools to monitor temperatures, adjust the systems and shut off water pipes if needed.

In 2018, during a prolonged cold spell with temperatures in the single digits, about a third of Baltimore City schools did not have adequate heat, causing a reckoning over maintenance of their schools. Some schools closed for days, while students at other schools wore their coats and mittens as temperatures plunged inside the buildings.

The city called in help to make emergency repairs to burst pipes, collapsed ceilings and furnace breakdowns.

Since then, the city has installed a monitoring system with sensors that can tell the central office when its boilers aren’t working and the temperatures inside the building have dropped.

Anne Arundel has a similar capacity to monitor its schools.

As soon as snow is cleared enough for maintenance staff to get inside buildings, Anne Arundel County Public Schools spokesman Bob Mosier said, they will begin making sure there are no frozen or leaking pipes and that the heat is still functioning properly.

Anne Arundel’s buildings are in better shape than most districts — about 71% of schools are rated as being in excellent or good condition, Mosier said.

And it isn’t just temperatures inside the buildings that worry school officials, Mosier said. They are concerned about students standing at bus stops or walking to school in 4- or 7-degree weather.

Statewide, about 81% of the state’s 1,400 schools are in need of work and nearly half are considered “functionally unreliable,” according to a report released last fall by Maryland State Comptroller Brooke Lierman.

The systems with schools in the worst shape are Kent, Garrett, Allegany, Washington and Cecil counties.

Kent County’s Superintendent Mary Boswell-McComas said her buildings are fine so far. Her crews are “checking pipes, boiler systems and trying to keep sidewalks and parking lots clear of ice.”

Howard County Public Schools are aiming to reopen on Wednesday, spokesperson Brian Bassett said.

To prepare, “our wonderful and hardworking custodians at schools are busy preparing school grounds so if there are issues at schools, we will find out,” Bassett said in a statement.

Clearing out the parking lots and sidewalks of 174 school campuses was Baltimore County Public Schools’ main priority, said Gboyinde Onijala, spokesperson for the school system, on Monday morning. It was too soon to say whether pipes were frozen or heat is working in all county schools, she said, and maintenance crews will first have to remove snow so they can get inside the buildings.

Montgomery County Public Schools spokesman Chris Cram said district leaders are preparing for a prolonged closure.

“It just remains to be seen how quickly we can clean it up,” he said. “The frigid temperatures they’re predicting for the next couple of days are going to make ice removal really difficult.”

Each day, he said, will require a judgment call.

To prepare for the storm, the Archdiocese of Baltimore makes sure schools, and sometimes their adjacent parishes, have a snow removal plan in place with tools like plows, shovels and salt.

Archdiocese schools follow the closure protocols of the counties they’re located in, so when Howard County schools shut down for the day (or week), for example, the district’s archdiocese schools follow suit.

“Had the counties in Maryland opened for school this morning, we would have been ready to go,” Chancellor of Education Greg Farno said.

Colleges and universities are also working to ensure their buildings are safe for students.

The number one priority of the facilities management team at Salisbury University during a storm is flexibility, said Eric Berkheimer, associate vice president of facilities and capital management at the Eastern Shore school.

The oldest building on the university’s campus was built in 1925, meaning it is less insulated than some of the newer facilities, Berkheimer said.

To prepare, the facilities management team tries to run the heat higher than usual to keep the pipes warm. Berkheimer’s team also does regular walk-throughs of the spaces and makes sure that the emergency generators on campus are fueled and fully operational.

Even though the older buildings tend to be at the most risk, Berkheimer makes sure his team also keeps their eyes on newer buildings, as well.

Classes will be held virtually until Jan. 30. About 450 students remain on campus.

“We have licensed engineers that do repeated visits and track logs,” Berkheimer said.

In total, about 30 people worked this weekend monitoring buildings, spreading salt and clearing snow, he said. About 50 additional employees spread across campus on Monday.

“We are just making sure we can support the students on campus and the essential staff,” he said.

Usually, snowstorms aren’t the worst weather event that the Eastern Shore university sees.

“Our experience has been that hurricanes have been more impactful than snow,” he said. “Those have more impacts on us than anything else.”

Reporters Kristen Griffith, Maya Lora, Jess Nocera, Talia Richman and Ellie Wolfe contributed to this report.

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