As children across the United States start the school year, concerns about rising heat in classrooms continue. This is especially true for those in low-income communities who are more likely to lack air conditioning and other cooling technologies. “Summers continue to get hotter and hotter. We are now in a permanent drought,” says Ylenia Aguilar, Moms’ Southwest Organizer, who lives in Arizona. “We need to make sure we have our kiddos in air-conditioned areas.”
Tell the House of Representatives: Protect Our Children From Extreme Weather
At the end of the last school year, schools from Colorado and Massachusetts were forced to close because of heat concerns. Some school systems have staggered academic years and shortened summer breaks as a result. But it’s not even September and some schools, including in Memphis, reopened for the year only to immediately dismiss early for heat. Districts all over the country are struggling to take action on extreme heat, and resource distribution is often uneven. “School districts are funded by homeowner taxes. If you are living in a poor zip code, you have fewer resources for your school,” Ylenia says.
Ylenia’s Phoenix-based school district was able to make improvements to its cooling technologies through taxpayer-funded bonds. So far, they’ve updated the school’s HVAC systems and added shading at bus stops, solar panels, and LED lighting. Though she recognizes that “not everyone is lucky, not everyone gets approved bonds,” Ylenia acknowledges efforts by local government officials to manage extreme heat, including planting more trees for communities that are in severe need of shade. “But those trees have to grow, and it could be decades before these children can benefit from the shade from those trees,” she notes.
According to a report from the Arizona Department of Health Services on developing school heat policies, in 2020 the temperature was more than 100 degrees for 145 days. Those numbers are rising every year and could have an outsize effect on low-income, Tribal, and rural communities. The state even appointed its first chief heat officer around the end of the last school year. The health effects of extreme heat on children are varied and include fainting, organ failure, and in extreme cases, death, a report from EPA found. Extreme heat is also connected to learning loss, anxiety, and depression. According to the report: “The combination of exposure to high heat plus poor health outcomes has been linked to the socioeconomic demographics of a given area, along with access to A/C.”
Hilda Palache Leon, a teacher in Osborn School District in Phoenix, says her students have already benefitted from added heat protections, including shading in the playgrounds, air conditioning, and starting recess earlier in the day when temperatures are cooler, often before lunch time. Hilda says her students are more alert because of the schedule shift. “They get water, they get to cool down for 30 minutes, and they are ready to learn. That has made a huge difference.”
Extreme heat doesn’t just affect children but their families as well. Ylenia notes that many workers don’t get relief from the heat at their jobs, something the federal government is attempting to address with a proposed rule intended to protect workers from extreme heat, announced in July. “The blue-collar workers, the ladies working in the dry-cleaning facilities where the heat is in their faces. You don’t get relief; their body never regulates,” Ylenia says. “Then you have to go home and clean and cook and take care of your kids, and the kids have their little bodies unregulated.”
Ylenia and other activists have spoken to Congressman Ruben Gallego (AZ-3) about managing extreme heat, something he has been vocal about. In 2023, Gallego introduced the Extreme Heat Emergency Act, proposing that extreme heat be categorized by FEMA as a major disaster so it can receive resources, including “utility assistance, emergency protective measures, cooling centers, infrastructure funding, reimbursement for household air conditioner repairs, forward-looking hazard mitigation funding, and more.” So far that hasn’t happened. In August, Gallego issued a blistering critique of the Biden administration, calling them “all talk, no action when it comes to extreme heat in Arizona.”
The absence of a FEMA major disaster categorization doesn’t keep Arizonians from acting on their own. They have to. In June, Tucson announced a worker heat protection ordinance. In April, Phoenix expanded heat protections for thousands of workers. Ylenia sees these as small steps toward a shared goal of managing extreme heat in schools and at work. “The responsibility is on everyone,” she says.
Tell the House of Representatives: Protect Our Children From Extreme Weather