Students sweat in classrooms without air conditioning. Districts struggle with the heat.

Students at Mindy Neiland Elementary School complained of headaches, nausea and nosebleeds this week as a potentially record-breaking heat wave hit the West Coast, scorching classrooms from Los Angeles to Las Vegas.

After lunch on Thursday, Neiland walked over to the thermostat in her Granada Hills, California, classroom to check the temperature and saw a scorching 93 degrees Fahrenheit.

The air conditioning isn’t working and she says the portable chiller the city gave her as a backup is “useless” because it blows hot air.

“My students have headaches, they are miserable and they can’t learn in this environment,” she said.

Los Angeles Unified is one of many school districts across the country rushing to install or repair cooling systems and shade structures on campuses as climate change and extreme heat take a toll on poorly equipped classrooms, gymnasiums and playgrounds.

The extreme summer weather highlights some pressing expenses for school budgets and a point of growing tension between school communities and administrators: cooling systems and shade structures.

Many schools have survived for years without air conditioning, but that’s no longer the reality. Regions in the U.S. that never needed it are now under increasing pressure to upgrade facilities to keep kids cool. This summer was the hottest on record, breaking last year’s record, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service.

The need to cool schools has increased significantly in the U.S. Northwest and in states including California, Alaska and Montana, according to a recent analysis by Climate Central, which measured cooling demand from late July to early September.

According to Cassandra Davis, a professor of public policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, warmer days around the start of the academic year affect temperatures in classrooms and on campus and are more likely to pose a threat to student learning.

“Rising temperatures are putting a strain on already aging public school facilities,” Davis said. “And in places that are unlikely to have up-to-date air conditioning units, it’s no surprise that learning is being halted, suspended or postponed.”

Hundreds of poorly equipped schools, including some in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Portland, Oregon, faced the heat of late summer and sent their children home in early September due to extreme heat warnings.

The shortened class time hinders students’ learning and further widens the achievement gap, Davis said.

Why don’t schools have good air conditioning?

Many classrooms and school gyms are too hot without air conditioning during the summer months. But that wasn’t the case in the past. In regions of the country that are new to scorching temperatures, some buildings aren’t equipped with cooling systems.

There are also challenges in regions where it always gets scorching hot. In areas with cooling systems, districts must deal with aging and broken facilities during heat waves. The urgency of these repairs is carried by maintenance workers, including those in Los Angeles who have been responding to calls to repair air conditioning systems every day this school year.

According to Britt Vaughn, spokesperson for the Los Angeles Unified School District, a total of 50,000 air conditioning units in the district need to be replaced because they are old, worn out or defective.

Officials coordinating repairs to these cooling systems are providing teachers with alternative indoor cooling units and installing misting fans in elementary schools to keep students’ outdoor areas cool during warmer days, Vaughn said.

In Reno, Nevada, where Climate Central analyses show the number of days air conditioning is needed has increased, some school gyms built in the 1980s don’t have cooling systems, which wasn’t considered necessary at the time, said Adam Searcy, director of operations for the Washoe County School District.

Some of these Reno gyms now reach temperatures of up to 80 degrees during volleyball practices in the early summer months, but the district has no plans to install air conditioning because it is too expensive, Searcy said. He said schools in the district do plan to build future gyms with proper cooling systems.

“The demand for cooling is likely to continue to increase as the planet warms. Schools will need significant building upgrades and face higher operating costs to maintain safe, comfortable temperatures,” the Climate Central report said.

How Heat Affects Students and Teachers

All students experience the negative effects of hot classrooms because children cannot learn in unhealthy weather conditions, Davis said.

Traditionally disadvantaged students will feel this even more in low-income communities, where there is less air conditioning and shade. “There is no opportunity to play outside and cool off inside,” which is essential to students’ well-being, she said.

“We know historically that communities of color and low-income communities are in places where there’s less opportunity for tree cover,” Davis said. “They’re in environmentally hazardous places without access to shade.”

Are there any solutions?

Some regions have made great strides in addressing the shortage. Classrooms in Chicago schools have air conditioning, but that wasn’t always the case.

Years ago, the Chicago Teachers Union negotiated with the district to ensure classrooms were cool, Stacy Davis Gates, president of the teachers union, told USA Today. The group is now focused on pushing the district toward additional energy-saving solutions.

“That means not only air conditioning in the unit, but also … solar panels on the roof to keep costs down,” she said.

Some regions are shifting the school year to make it easier for children. Milwaukee Public Schools has pushed back the academic calendar this year to begin in early September instead of late August. The decision was made after the district was forced to cancel classes due to extreme heat in the early days of last school year.

Other jurisdictions have passed laws or considered regulations requiring schools to cool classrooms to a certain temperature.

A workers’ rights law passed in California in July requires districts to keep schools at a comfortable temperature, but some schools in the Golden State say they’re struggling to meet that requirement.

Contact Kayla Jimenez at [email protected]. Follow her on X at @kaylajjimenez.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: No Air Conditioning in Schools? Why Students Are Hot