There can be dozens of air conditioners on the roof of a school. And they have to be cycled on and off all day long as they cool the building, else it'll turn into winter in there. Definitely a fulltime job for somebody. That's why we have thermostats.

You do wonder if those staff people would be ok turning it on and off by hand if they got the "$1.5 to $2 million" needed to replace the system.

That said, I'm pretty sure I could get an Amiga emulator running on a Raspberry Pi for a lot less than $1.5 million.

As has been said multiple times before, it's not $2 million to keep this kid's school project running for another 30 years, it's $2 million for a better HVAC automation system. They've probably pissed away multiples of $2 million in energy costs not having a better system in place the past 30 years.

No kidding, but that's not how the article was written. My second paragraph was a comment on that.

Every budget ever written stuffs things that management thinks can be put off until later into funding for things that absolutely need to be done today.