Posted on 08/19/2023 5:18:24 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
... Teachers unions and educators are sounding the alarm about sweltering conditions in classrooms as the school year kicks off following a summer that wrapped the country in record-setting heat.
The issue of excessive heat in classrooms is not new, as in previous years aging school buildings with inadequate air conditioning have led schools to shut down early and switch to remote learning.
But some educators said the longer periods of hot weather, particularly in places that haven’t historically experienced multiday heat waves coupled with inadequate cooling systems, are making it difficult to teach and are putting students even more at risk.
"Kids and staff and teachers are feeling physically sick and lethargic, and just not being able to have that conducive, exciting learning environment that we should have at the very beginning of the school year," said Stephanie Yocum, president of the Polk Education Association, the teachers union.
Research has shown that hot classrooms can impair student learning. In one study published in 2020, researchers found that "students who experience hotter temperatures during the school year before their exams exhibit reduced learning" and that students scored lower with each additional day of temperatures around 80 degrees or above. The study also found that heat "has substantially larger impacts on the achievement of students in lower-income school districts," especially Black and Latino students.
Tawni Eckley, a fourth-grade teacher in Loveland, Colorado, returned to her unconditioned classroom in a brick school building this week and a thermostat that on Thursday read 84 degrees.
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
I NEVER attended a school 1st - 12th grade with an AC. We had windows and window fans to stir hot air.
“Teachers unions and educators are saying ...”
Haha, that’s hysterical. Maybe they should go back to the old schedule, when school started after Labor Day and ended before Memorial Day.
My spiritual director and I were talking about this yesterday. We both grew up in hot parts of the country before everything was air conditioned, and we all got by, including the school teachers, because they had the same no-a/c lives as the students.
Oh, no—84 degrees!
People fly thousands of miles to where it is in the low 80s just to play golf in the beating sun.
Maybe the educated fools should move the start date back to after Labor day and shorten the number of total days. The teachers don’t accomplish anything much and could cut the garbage they add to reading, writing, history, math, science & civics. Add recess outside everyday, lower salaries 5% and give a 6% bonus when a 80% of ateacher’s class passes tests at grade level.
51 degrees this AM
This is why it’s an absolute lock that they’re gonna declare an emergency and do as they wish without bothering with the law or legislation: We are at a place where they can simply claim a thing, any thing, is so and it is.
Public schools and illiterate teachers are doing more to impede learning than anything.
Exactly.....
FIRE ALL OF THEM, We had NO air conditioning when I went to school 50 plus years ago.
Going to school in Houston before A/C was a nightmare in the heat.
That isn’t the situation being described here but why is routine school maintenance and building issues being treated as a national concern, the local schools need to keep their buildings up, upgrade their heating and cooling systems, repair their roofs, repave the parking lots, they have budgets for that.
One of the universal learning experiences of a voters life is that school bonds are always on the ballot to repair the horrible buildings that leak etc., etc., etc., but the young gullible voter eventually learns that the buildings seem to never get repaired and that the ballot issues for more maintenance/repair money are a standard ballot measure for eternity.
Not only did I go to school K-6 without AC, but I had a teacher who ridiculed us for fanning ourselves. She said the attendant physical activity raised our heart rate and made us hotter. So we sat and sweat.
And as you can tell, I turned out ok. I grew up to post on FR.
Same.
And as you can tell, I turned out ok. I grew up to post on FR.
That’s what they are trying to avoid.
So now, global warming is making our kids dumber???
And all this time I thought it was our steering away from reading, writing and arithmetic to spend more time on cultural awareness and gender identifying.
How silly of me!
Attending school in the South I remember notebook paper sticking to my arms and No. 2 pencils not being able to write on paper that was damp from humidity. Our school had a flat roof and the tar would leak through the seams over the classrooms.
Teacher bonus tied to student test scores = teachers give out answers.
My mother wouldn’t let me wear shorts to school in South Texas in the 70s because it wasn’t ladylike. Unnngh.
As a 66 yr old poster. I went to K-12 from 1962 - 1975, here in New Jersey. Not one room had AC. We all turned out fine.
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