Keep Kids Cool In School by Dr. Michael Flanagan

A sweltering classroom. The lights are off. The air is thick. 34 crowded students melting into their seats, clammy limbs overlapping. You can’t even call it humidity. It’s more like a wet towel thrown on top of your head. Coating the brows and arms of educators and students alike, is a perpetual sheen of sweat, seeping into the atmosphere. Each heavy inhale feels like someone is sitting on your chest. Each exhale is overheated exhaust, just being recirculated into someone else’s lungs.

The temperature in the classroom only climbs during the day, and exponentially so when our students arrive from gym or the cafeteria. They shuffle through the clogged halls in a sweaty haze, collapsing onto sticky chairs to sit for another steamy, 42-minute lesson.

Very few people outside of our public school system can imagine what it’s like to to teach, let alone learn, in this country’s many stifling, stagnant classrooms during the hot times of the school year. Yet teachers throughout the country routinely cite temperature in their classrooms as a main factor that adversely affects student performance.

A recent poll of 45 of the 50 largest school districts in the country showed that only 34% of schools  had all, or virtually all, of their classrooms air conditioned. Amidst the seemingly insurmountable challenges public educators face: hunger, poverty, social injustice, violence, to name but a few, the one issue that routinely gets ignored is excessively hot classrooms.

There is no state or federal law on mandatory air conditioning, or maximum allowable temperature in our nation’s classrooms. OSHA recommends workplace temperatures between 68 and 76 degrees Fahrenheit. But there is no legislation to enforce this. And it does not apply to schools. How can there be no legal requirement for maximum temperature in our children’s classrooms?

Educators who do not have, or cannot rely on, air conditioning implement homemade methods such as using spray bottles and popsicles to keep children cool. Other teachers bring in their own fans, wetting and freezing towels, or placing ice in front of an open window. Both students and educators alike leave these un-air conditioned schools with cramps and headaches from dehydration.

No matter how effective an educator is, there is no learning occurring when classroom temperature rises from the mid 80’s to the low 100’s during the course of the school day. A recent Harvard study showed    that lower test scores correlate with higher heat indexes. Other studies show that students scores can drop as much as 30 percentage points when temperatures are between 81 and 86 degrees, compared to those when the temperature is at 68 degrees.

Interestingly enough, air conditioning is not a topic of concern when educational reformers point to student success factors. As a matter of fact, when Chicago teachers went on strike for better working conditions, they were maligned in the press as selfish and greedy for raising the issue of air conditioning.

Many of the older school buildings have been retrofitted with air-conditioning units, but very often those units either don’t work, or the compressors and Freon are empty from years of use. An aged air conditioner not only simply pushes hot air around, it  is as loud as a helicopter. Opening windows and turning off lights just  to make it seem cooler is sometimes the only way to continue with classes in these brick bake houses.

Classroom temperature issues are not limited to the U.S, but are a worldwide phenomenon. For example, the United Kingdom and its teachers’ unions are also grappling with excessive heat in the classrooms. Global warming and climate change have affected the need for air conditioning in places that previously did not have an issue. Cities such as St. Paul, Minnesota, Detroit, Michigan and Akron, Ohio are suddenly experiencing heat waves previously unheard of in those northern climates, and forcing the closure of their schools because of lack of air conditioning.

School districts have debated the need for air conditioning in classrooms for decades. It is a question of politics and money, and the lack of a uniform federal policy can lead to inconsistent  and unequal enforcement of air conditioning. For instance, NYC DOE regulations mandate that the AC’s can’t be turned on in classrooms before May 26th and must be shut off by September 22nd. Yet often, on whatever day the first hot one falls, pumping AC can be found in the main office or administrative offices.

Keeping our children cool in school is a basic need, an easy fix and it is not being met by our politicians and school boards. Why should we continue to allow the government to skirt rules designed to protect workers’ rights, when those violations involve our students and educators? Are factories more important than our schools? Based on the priorities of our elected officials, it would appear that way.

Some school districts have been left to decide on their own to close schools when the temperature is too high for students. Other districts have gone so far as to propose that school calendars be amended to eliminate returning to school in the heat of the summer. Some teachers unions are pressuring lawmakers to force them to conform to OSHA standards.

Sometimes that pressure works. For example, because of public outcry, New York City's Mayor Bill De Blasio has promised to have all schools air conditioned by 2022.

Ultimately, a teacher’s working environment is a child’s learning environment. We need to organize and keep up the pressure on federal, state and local politicians to maintain humane temperature standards for our students. The number for the U.S. Capitol switchboard is 1-202-224-3127. Give them your zip code, and you will be able to leave messages for your local Senator and Representative. #KeepKidsCoolInSchool