Hot classrooms are impairing student learning and health amid record-hot year, teachers say

NBC News / Comcast ^ | August 19, 2023 | By Daniella Silva (D-NBC)

[daniel1212]

Another pretext for power and benefits. How did we survive in the past w/o AC? And as for high temps, does a 2.1°F above average really warrant this claim, while temperatures were below average in the central and northern Plains and Upper Midwest.? The contiguous U.S. average temperature during July was 75.7°F, 2.1°F above average, ranking 11th warmest in the 129-year record. Generally, temperatures were below average in the central and northern Plains and Upper Midwest. Temperatures were above average from the West Coast to the southern Plains and along the Gulf and East coasts and in parts of the Great Lakes. - https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/monthly-report/national/202307

[FlingWingFlyer]

Well, if we still had reliable power plants, we could have air-conditioning in the schools.

[EastTexasTraveler]

I also went 1 - 12 without air conditioning - in Texas. It was just as hot then as now.

[JayGalt]

Students still need to remember the answers. That would be an improvement.
There should, in any case, be versions of each test with questions drawn from a larger set and teachers should not proctor their own classes.
Teaching to the test is a teacher’s canned indictment of oversight.
The fly in the ointment is the tests which at this point are filled with cant and politically correct misstatements. But passing reading & math at class level (historic class level) should be a minimum standard.

[Varsity Flight]

Nope.

Public schools are.

[daniel1212]

But the issue is what were the average class room, temps from 1895 onward?

https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/monthly-report/national/202307

[DoodleBob]

She may have had a point.

[cyclotic]

I moved to the Baltimore area about fifteen years ago. Every spring this comes up because most Baltimore schools don’t have AC. They have increased taxes several time yet they never seem to get around to installing AC

[HamiltonJay]

84 Degrees? Oh No!!

Its not like generations of kids managed to get educated long before Air Conditioning existed...

I can assure you, I sat through far worse than 84 degrees in classrooms growing up in NC.

I don’t think I even attended a single school that had AC, except perhaps a window unit in the office until moved up north. Best we ever had were some big fans, at most.

I won’t say it was fun to be in a hot classroom, but blaming the heat for students not being able to learn? at 84 degrees?

To quote the dementia patient in the White House..

“Come on, man.”

[mware]

Towards the end of one school year. It really got oppressive hot. I unlocked my classroom door and a wave of heat hit me in the face. Between the location of classroom (against gym wall and storage building, no breeze could come in) and a glitch in the heating system, my room was over 100 degrees. Luckily I didn’t have any animals in my room. Unfortunately my colleague in the next room lost all the fish in her tank, a hamster, iguana, and a half dozen emu eggs the kids were hatching for a farmer in our neighborhood.

[yldstrk]

Yes, air conditioning is a new thing. For centuries there was none.

[Bob434]

+100

[Varsity Flight]

Air conditioning... homeschool.

[deport]

Life is ever changing. Hell when I started school
in 1946 open windows and a fan was all we had. In
winter we had radiant heaters with a large boiler
below ground level. We did have school buses but
again is was open windows with them. I walked to
school as we lived about 1/4 mile away. If it was
raining run like hell.

[mware]

Now that I am thinking about it they were rheas not emus, although the farmer raised both. Was kind of funny when they would occasionally escape the classroom and run down the hallway.

[dljordan]

I went to grade school in the 50s in Nashville. We had no AC, just tall windows.

[N. Theknow]

We all dressed as if we were going to church. Only difference between school and church was hats and gloves for girls and coats and ties for boys.

[butlerweave]

We didn’t know of the thing called AC back in the days of sanity

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

*** a thermostat that on Thursday read 84 degrees.***

Waah! Cry me a river! I don’t remember any AC in any of the class rooms when I went to school. 1952-1964.

And the school I went to in the Ozarks was hotter than he!! during the spring and fall months!

[discostu]

I really don’t know why they moved the beginning of the school year. Day after Labor Day, ie the day after the end of summer vacation season, was perfect. Mid August, the dog days of summer, is just dumb.