Extreme Heat Disrupts Summer School Across U.S
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- Martina Meijer, a New York City elementary substitute teacher, was told to keep her 15 students inside on a 100-degree July 4 weekend day after the school's AC failed, and officials prohibited recess, so she ran YouTube "brain breaks" for four hours.
- Philadelphia School District dismissed students early from 52 insufficiently air-conditioned schools on the final day of school in early June; Superintendent Tony Watlington Sr. said the district either sends students home or shifts to virtual days when temperatures exceed 85–90°F.
- Canadian wildfire smoke in mid-July forced New York City's Summer Rising program to move all outdoor activities indoors for thousands of students, eliminating the outdoor play that research links to improved academic, social, and emotional development.
- The Madison Metropolitan School District in Wisconsin canceled elementary summer school when the heat index was projected at 108°F; Washington, D.C. canceled all outdoor programs; Joliet Public Schools (Illinois) switched to remote instruction; and Central Falls School District (Rhode Island) shut down summer programs entirely.
- A 2021 Center for Climate Integrity study found more than 13,000 U.S. public schools need an estimated $40 billion in HVAC installations; the average U.S. public school building is nearly 50 years old, and Philadelphia schools average 73 years, making cheap window-unit retrofits impractical.
- Federal regulations that would mandate water breaks, rest periods, and cooling areas for workers including teachers have stalled indefinitely, leaving individual districts and substitute teachers to make improvised safety calls without uniform training or clear standards.
- Elizabeth Bechard of Moms Clean Air Force warned that students attending schools without AC and returning to homes without AC have no opportunity to thermally recover, compounding health risks for children whose developing thermal regulation systems make them more vulnerable than adults.
Why it matters: More than 13,000 U.S. public schools lack adequate HVAC and would need roughly $40 billion to install it, yet federal heat-safety rules for workers have stalled — so during each successive heat wave, districts improvise, summer programs shrink, and the students who most need academic catch-up time are the ones learning in the worst conditions. Philadelphia alone had to dismiss students from 52 schools in a single June day, and that pattern is now repeating in cities from Madison to New York to Los Angeles.
