Essay by Eric Worrall
Apparently in the South schools are fitted with air conditioning, but in Philadelphia and Baltimore schools cannot afford a bit of insulation and some air conditioners.
Climate change is forcing schools to close early for ‘heat days’
With no air conditioning and no money to install it, districts are sending students home
By Laura Meckler and
Anna Phillips
June 4, 2022 at 6:00 a.m. EDTTemperatures kept rising in Philadelphia and Baltimore. Finally, it was just too hot to keep students in classrooms without air conditioning. On Tuesday, both systems let students out early.
For Principal Richard M. Gordon IV, it was just another early-summer day in the halls of his West Philadelphia high school, where sweltering temperatures, high humidity and a lack of ventilation made classrooms so uncomfortable that students could barely sit still.
“Can I honestly say effective learning is happening in my building? I can’t,” said Gordon, the principal of Paul Robeson High School.
Climate change poses a growing threat to American schools. Regions where extreme heat was once rare — from the Northeast to the Pacific Northwest — now periodically find their buildings unbearably hot as spring turns to summer and again when classes resume in August or September.
In much of the South, air conditioning has long been a necessity, and schools are typically outfitted with centralized systems, although rising temperatures may require upgrades.
But in places such as Philadelphia, air conditioning was a luxury decades ago, when most school buildings were constructed. Perhaps there was a hot day in mid-June or an uncomfortable swelter in early September. They were flukes.
No more. Urban areas, in particular, tend to have a dangerous combination of older buildings, less money to upgrade them and concentrated heat. Designed to maximize space in crowded environments, urban schools often lack green space and shade. Asphalt often covers their playgrounds and other open spaces, radiating heat during the summer.
…
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/06/04/school-heat-days-climate-change/
My first impulse was to slam Principal Richard Gordon for being a useless teacher making excuses, but in 2020 Principal Gordon received “National Principal of the Year” award – so maybe the problem is not him. And reading the article carefully, Principal Gordon just said the classrooms were too hot – maybe the global warming claims were added to the story by the journalist. And to be fair, the pictures of the schools I’ve viewed, they look like ovens – large blank sun facing walls made of bricks, no obvious attempt to mitigate the heat, say by covering the walls with heat reflective paint.
Of course, that leaves the question – why can’t Baltimore and Philadelphia schools afford a bit of building maintenance and air-conditioned comfort for their students?
The article I quoted suggests teachers are fed up with the political neglect of their students’ needs.
One possible explanation for the lack of cash for schools is that civic leaders of Baltimore and Philadelphia are too busy blowing money combatting climate change to spare some funding to care for their crumbling educational facilities.
In January this year, Mayor Brandon of Baltimore promised over $100 million by my calculation, to support the city’s net zero push. Given a basic aircon system costs around $1000, that would have been enough cash to install 100,000 air conditioners in Baltimore’s classrooms.
Philadelphia also committed to Net Zero in 2021. Although the Philadelphia document didn’t throw budget numbers around, I think we can be safe assuming Philadelphia is also wasting crazy amounts of cash chasing the carbon demon, when they should be taking care of their children’s educational facilities.
Maybe I’ve misunderstood the situation, it looks like some complicated things are happening. There may be other issues I’m unaware of. But from what I have read, if I was a voter in Baltimore or Philadelphia, I would demand that my civic leaders stop wasting money on “climate emergencies” and other irrelevant grandstanding nonsense, at least until real problems like the poor state of their district’s school buildings was addressed.
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Look at the literacy rates for their HS grads and how they rate per grade to the national average. Baltimore has consistently been at the very bottom of the list. I don’t know about Philly.
Baltimore City Schools: 41 Percent of Students Below D Average | Newsmax.com
That speaks to teachers, parents, and school policies.
The students there should follow the bell curve for actual intelligence. 41% below ‘D’ means you’re doing it wrong.
Unless a disproportionate number of the smart folks fled inner city Baltimore and Philly a long time ago…
How well do “ghost students” (from comment above) grade against the national average?
Unfortunately, the cost estimate of $1000 per air conditioner is much too low. The reality is pretty likely $5000+. Several reasons for this. One is these are union towns with insane labor rules. A reason the otherwise attractive Philadelphia Convention Center lost business is because an exhibitor couldn’t even plug in an extension cord without paying a union electrician to do it. Another reason is there won’t be enough electric capacity in the buildings. Sure you can plug a window unit in your house without another thought, but try doing 50 of those in an old building.
They use the same Infinite Energy engineering skills as they do for imagining whole neighborhoods quick-charging BEVs in the existing homes.
Sure! Every home can install a three phase 480V in the garage using the existing domestic wiring. Charge both cars at the same time!
Or put one of these on each of the kids’ desks…
missed the picture – back to skool for me or what!!!
In the US, most if not all public school systems have the same issues:
1. Top heavy administration costs.
2. Unfunded pension liabilities.
3. Poorly educated educators.
4. Too much government red tape.
Even if a municipality closed all of its schools and dismissed all of its teachers, administrators, bureaucrats, sinecures and other people of unclear purpose, school taxes would still have to be collected for at least thirty additional years to pay the ongoing pension and bond commitments.
A) The school buildings are design dinosaurs from when windows were minimized so that even open, they reduce ventilation.
B) The buildings are installed with central air conditioning that allow one heating system to heat the entire building. Adding cooling systems does not require an entire building refit.
Add in cooling systems means installing compressors/condensers and heat exchangers to the central ventilation ducts.
Because the buildings are significant in size, they’d require commercial upgrades, like a cooling pond.
Most school buildings are constructed of concrete and cinder block. Insulation can be added to the exterior or interior rooms.
C) Memorial Day weekend was always when the Philadelphia area experienced it’s first 90°F+ heat waves of the approaching summer.
In my youth six decades ago, I marched in Memorial Day parades with the Cub Scouts and later with the Boy Scouts.
During my middle teen years, I marched in Memorial Day parades with school bands.
We always expected Memorial Day parades to be excessively hot and humid, often with mid-afternoon thunderstorms. On several occasions, we carefully watched approaching thunderstorms and double-timed back to our assembly location before they soaked us.
D) It is common practice for politicians and school representatives to whine and moan about “the old school buildings” as prelude to large capital budget requests for money to build new schools.
New schools that are often built as an addition in the same school district. Meaning the old school stays in use. Rarely, is a school building razed and a modern school constructed in it’s place.
E) Politicians use the design and cost submissions as a means for corruption, where apparent lowest cost bids of the politically connected are selected. Building design considerations take a distant back seat to lowest bid and most political connections.
Losers of the bidding process often sue the school over adverse decisions, adding further expense to the school construction process.
ROFLMAO
Went to school in East Los Angeles in the 60’s.
About every other year we would get a week off because temps were in the 100’s.
The 90’s? Suck it up kid, there are children in Africa …
And on rainy days, we would get sent home after half a day because we couldn’t go outside for recess. No problem, our MOMS were home to feed us lunch. And if they weren’t, a neighbor would step up and take care of us, no problem.
Y’all are wimps.
Back in the 30’s when it was really hot, much more so than now, when the 3 R’s were the focus of education the children thrived were very much alive and made American education the envy of the world. They have since woke up and wimped down and failed miserably in education. I personally observed it for 35 years….
When I was in grade school here in the southeastern US, we didn’t have air conditioning until my senior year. There were plenty of days when we had early dismissal due to the heat. There were no fans and no tall ceilings. Every room was hot until the late fall, and then it got hot again early spring. This was in the 1980’s and 1990’s. We had some harsh winters. Then we also had many winters with absolutely no snow at all. Where I live, there hasn’t been a snowless winter in over a decade, but there were plenty of snowless winters when I was in school.
It always amazes me that things that have happened before many times are suddenly now caused by “climate change”.
One thing my school didn’t have was useless administrative positions that plague the modern day indoctrination factories. Now schools are filled with overpriced administrators who, let us be honest, are useless people with useless jobs. The US spends more per student than most countries, and gets some of the worse return on that investment because of these useless people in administrative roles.
I admittedly went to a small school district. But we had no administrators. No vice-principals. The one principal did both the high school and the elementary school. Maybe we should go back to having such combined school systems.
The temperature in Philadelphia….
9:37 AM EDT on June 5, 2022 (GMT -4) | Updated 11 seconds ago
82° | 58°
71 °F
LIKE 69°
An unprecedented unbearable high of 82F!
/sarc/
To be fair Philly had one school day over 89F this year, May 31 had a high of 95F.
This is likely an AFT union school, and if AFT has demonstrated anything over the last two years, it is that they will use any excuse not to teach. Getting full pay & benefits without teaching, let alone meeting any standards of achievement, is the goal of AFT.
Regarding the above article’s title:
Well, then, simply turn off the heating during the winter.
Acclimatization is a real thing. As we have become used to better climate control in our daily lives we do not adjust to seasonal changes. Anybody that has to work (or play) outside knows the discomfort of the first heatwave or cold snap.
Probably the most extreme example of playing in extreme heat is the Bad Water Ultra, usually held in July starting at Bad Water Death Valley and ending 138 miles later at Whitney Portal. If you got a trail permit it is stylish to then proceed up to the summit of Mt. Whitney. The Bad Water runner’s greatest preparation challenge is getting enough heat training before the event to just not wilt in the 120+ deg conditions. I think the best training method I’ve seen is dragging a truck tire behind you while trudging up the Whitney Portal Road wearing heavy clothing.
My High School (’68-’72) dress code in my all-boy school was coat and tie.(Jesuit) As we approached summer, sometimes they didn’t require the coat.
The house I grew up in didn’t have AC.
We survived and I still learned stuff like reading, writing and arithmetic.
We lived with it.
Go with pinwheels and mirrors for power?
Your kids will have to learn to live it.
That’s the only effect “Climate Change” will have. (Aside from the BS they are taught.)
In Philadelphia, nobody knows where the money goes. New teachers are underpaid, they have no textbooks, no access to copying machines, no air conditioning. The school board does have limousines take them to meetings, and I bet they have air conditioning. Hey, it’s for the children.
Well they should all install heat pumps!!!
There, simple.
Class room 2022:
Student: “Teacher, I heard a word yesterday, “mitigation”, but I don’t know what it means”.
Teacher: “There is no such word as “mitigation”. You are mistaken”.
I believe these are two separate conversations. I feel that blaming climate change for a hot school is a bit misleading. As a Philly native, I remember many, many days of oppressive heat while still in school. To say the hottest days are now “flukes” is a misrepresentation. Additionally, the current state of play in the City of Philadelphia is pretty much “in flames.” The pandemic has taken a toll on the city and there are so many areas in need of urgent help. Homelessness, lack of city workers, unequal pay, labor union issues, housing, obsolete tech issues, etc.. It can’t be blamed on D’s or R’s, the problems go back decades and need to re-worked from the ground up. Unfortunately, air conditioning for school is (or should be) near the bottom of the list. Where it was when I was a student in the 70’s.