By Amanda McGregor
Staff writer
BEVERLY — A boiler broke at Briscoe Middle School this week, forcing students to bundle up in sweaters and winter jackets just to keep warm.
School administrators sent a letter home to parents Monday urging them to send their children to school with sweaters and other warm clothing until repairs are completed. With only one of the school’s two boilers functioning, some classrooms are “quite cool,” the letter said.
In the meantime, the other boiler is working overtime to heat the whole school at lower temperatures than normal, Superintendent James Hayes said.

“In some rooms, it’s wicked cold,” said Chris Emery, a Briscoe seventh-grader. “It’s not hard to learn; you’ve just got to wear a jacket.”
Hayes said the boiler should be fixed by the end of the week.
“One (boiler) can keep it at a somewhat reasonable level,” Hayes said. “Some rooms may not be quite as warm as they used to be, but I was over there this morning, and I didn’t find it uncomfortable.”
But seventh-grader Sarah Nesbitt said the building “feels freezing.”
City Councilor Tim Flaherty, who recently toured Briscoe, said he worries about the condition of the 82-year-old building.
“It’s kind of disturbing,” he said of the broken boiler. “The overall scheme of the whole thing is the age of Briscoe and … preventative maintenance of the whole building. We’re going to be there for many more years, so I think the condition of Briscoe is a concern.”
As soon as the broken boiler is repaired, Hayes said the other one will be serviced to ensure that both of them are fit to heat the school through the cold winter months.
The faulty boiler comes on the heels of other problems at Briscoe this fall, including a hepatitis A outbreak last month and the subsequent discovery that soap and paper towels weren’t stocked in some bathrooms — most of which aren’t equipped with hot water.
Additionally, Briscoe Principal Rhonda Gauthier has been out since Nov. 7 on “personal health leave,” Hayes said. In the interim, Associate Principal Donna Jenko and Assistant Principal Jorge Goncalves are serving as co-principals, and two social studies teachers are taking turns as the assistant principal, handling disciplinary matters.
Despite those hitches, Hayes said the first year of the combined middle school is going well. School officials closed Memorial Middle School this year, putting the city’s 1,000 middle school students at Briscoe.
“From my perspective, it’s gone extremely well,” Hayes said.
Some parents echo his satisfaction.
“It’s been very, very good,” said Kathleen O’Shea, whose son is in sixth grade. “I find the teachers very responsive.”
She wasn’t worried about the broken boiler.
“My child doesn’t tell me he’s freezing; he just takes two sweatshirts,” said O’Shea as she waited in the pickup area in front of Briscoe yesterday afternoon. “Things happen in life. They’ll fix it, just like you do when the heater breaks in your house.”
O’Shea was among a handful of parents outside the school yesterday who said they were confident school officials would fix the boiler as quickly as possible.
“My daughter told me one room will be freezing and then another really hot,” said Susan Copeland, “so she’s bundling up, just like we are at home. They’re in the process of replacing it. I’m not worried.”
As for the principal — who was originally slated to return after Thanksgiving — Hayes said he now expects Gauthier to come back to school after the winter holidays.
“Another assessment was done, and we said we had better extend this longer,” he said. “She needed more time to deal with her issues. I’m really hopeful we’ll see Rhonda Gauthier come back the first of the year.”
Hayes would not divulge further details of Gauthier’s leave.