As students and staff finally return from their well-deserved summer break, many enter the new school year rather uncomfortably in some states as record-level heat persists. It’s a situation that has both educators and parents worried about their students’ safety.
“We don’t talk about the risk of heat until it hits us,” Shannon McCann, a special education teacher in Federal Way, WA, told The Seattle Times. The Seattle area recently experienced extreme temperatures in May, prompting teachers to provide students with ice pops, spray their necks with cold water and urge them to stay close to fans. In other cases, students found shade under a tree, while others went home sick.
“It gets harder in a high-poverty community when people don’t have a way to escape heat even after school,” she added.
Now, educators are worried they’ll have to repeat these survival tactics to keep their students safe amid the record-high temperatures.
“The state should have a plan for all schools in these extreme heat situations,” said McCann. Unfortunately, that’s not the case in many districts.
According to a 2020 report from the Government Accountability Office, nearly one-third of districts require updates to their HVAC systems.
But Washington is certainly not the only state experiencing this issue. In New Mexico, staff at Albuquerque Public Schools are working hard to keep schools cool during this “major heat wave,” the district reports. Over the past year, APS has allocated more than $28 million in federal funds to upgrade its HVAC systems. However, only so much can be done to keep classrooms cool, explained John Dufay, executive director of Maintenance and Operations at APS.
“Because most APS schools were built 50 or more years ago, most schools have evaporative coolers,” he said, according to the district’s news release. “Humidity can handicap evaporative coolers, so you can’t bring the heat down more than 20 degrees. If it’s 105 degrees out and the evaporative coolers are blowing on high with humidity, you still can’t achieve a temperature below 85 degrees.”
As a result, the district has had its technicians working around the clock this summer testing HVAC units to mitigate potential issues. But with 25,000 cooling units in use each day, they say, isolated incidents are likely.
“It’s important to remember that air conditioners are mechanical systems, and just like our units at home, they can be fine one day and not the next,” said Chief Operations Officer Gabriella Duran.
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Students across Texas aren’t spared from this heat wave, either. In the El Paso Independent School District, some parents worry for their children who attend school at some of the older buildings that don’t have refrigerated air, like Polk Elementary.
“We felt it firsthand because we had ‘Meet the Teacher’ day and it was—I didn’t actually measure it—but it felt really hot, and it was even hard for me to stay and pay attention for five minutes,” one parent told KFOX14.
In a letter to parents, the district acknowledged the situation and said that staff would keep windows cracked and ensure air is circulating in the classrooms. Still, parents worry.
“No, I don’t think it’s enough,” one parent said. “Right now, we’re outside and yes, there’s a breeze, but that breeze is hot. Even if you open the window, it’s not like it will make a big difference.”
