Owen Driscoll, a 17-year-old 12th-grader at Rufus King International High School in Milwaukee, was skeptical about starting school three weeks later than usual after Labor Day this year, but he’s beginning to see the benefits.
“Last year, when we still had the antique schedule, we had a few scorching days [off in August] because it was so unbearable,” he said, pointing out that few classrooms are air-conditioned. This made it complex to get into the school rhythm, he said.
By pushing back the start date and extending the school year into June, scorching days are more likely at the end of the year, Driscoll acknowledged. But until then, he said, students are ready to finish and appreciate the unplanned free time.
Higher summer temperatures caused by climate change are prompting more school districts across the country to start the school year later, bucking a decades-long trend of moving school start times forward. In addition to the change at some Milwaukee schools, school officials in Philadelphia and in Billings, Montana, have also cited the heat as a reason for moving up their start dates.
“We see examples across the country,” said Karen White, deputy executive director of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers union.
“I think it’s only gotten worse,” said White. “We’re at a point [in the school year when] Parents, teachers and students should be excited. It’s difficult when you send your child to a classroom that’s more like a hot yoga class.”
White said climate change has prompted some teachers to demand air conditioning in collective bargaining. She pointed to a agreement in Columbus, Ohio, which provided for air-conditioned classrooms by the 2025/26 school year.
In Philadelphia, district spokeswoman Christina Clark said starting school after Labor Day would minimize the number of heat-related school closures, “which exacerbate the inequality between schools with and without air conditioning.”
“Hot temperatures during the first days of school lead to headaches, inattention and general frustration,” Clark wrote in an email to Stateline.
In Billings, Montana, Superintendent Erwin Garcia found that one of the district’s oldest high schools had no air conditioning and the other had only half of the building with air conditioning.
“I’ve noticed that classrooms can be 90 degrees, 95 degrees, almost 100 degrees. And our students and teachers have to go through this process for two to three weeks,” Garcia said. told local station KTVQ last December when the district was discussing changes. The school board voted to push back this year’s start date to September 3. The 2023-24 school year would begin on August 22.
He estimated that fully air-conditioning the two oldest high schools would cost $24 million – and that the district would have to ask taxpayers for the money, KTVQ reported.
It’s complex when you send your child to a classroom that’s more like a scorching yoga class.
– Karen White, deputy executive director of the National Education Association
A lawmaker in Texas, where most schools resumed classes the week of Aug. 12, plans to introduce a bill in the next legislative session that would delay school openings to reduce the strain on the state’s power grid.
“With 1,100 new residents arriving every day and an economy that continues to grow, opening schools before Labor Day is a terribly wasteful drain on our power grid. Cooling thousands of buildings – often the largest buildings in a community – during the hottest months of the year makes no sense,” said Texas Republican Rep. Jared Patterson. wrote on the social platform X.
“Schools should remain closed completely in July and August to save taxpayers on cooling costs while preserving our electrical grid,” he wrote last month.
In general, schools in the Northeast start later, and schools in the Deep South start earlier. In areas that are scorching most of the year, such as Arizona, Florida and Texas, heat is less of a concern because almost all schools are fully air-conditioned. In the six New England states, however, almost no students return to school before the end of August, while in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania, about three-quarters of students do not return until after Labor Day, according to a Pew Research Center survey.
Contrary to popular belief, the school calendar has little to do with agriculture, According to historiansIf that were the case, children on farms would have no school during the planting season in spring and the harvest season in autumn.
It is true that in recent years, historically scorching summers have forced many schools to temporarily close, regardless of when classes began. Last month, for example, some schools in Illinois, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin closed or let students out of class early because of the extreme heat.
And last year, schools in nine states – Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin – were either closed during the first week of September or let children out before the scheduled end of school, according to a Opinion poll from CBS News.
Climate change will “likely cause a shift in the onset of weather to September in places with reasonably moderate June temperatures,” said Joshua Graff Zivin, economist and director of the Cowhey Center on Global Transformation at the University of California, San Diego.
Zivin said more schools should invest in air conditioning, but even with such a system, a scorching commute to school or too high temperatures at home that make it impossible to get a good night’s sleep can affect student performance and lead to calls for later school starts.
A US Government Accountability Office study In 2020, it was found that 41% of school districts nationwide need to upgrade or replace the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems in at least half of their schools (that’s about 36,000 schools).
According to Jackie Nowicki, a leader of the GAO’s education team, the federal agency has not determined how many schools have no air conditioning at all.
In Milwaukee, Adria Maddaleni, human resources director for Milwaukee Public Schools, said the later start was partly the result of a parent survey. Only about a quarter of classrooms in the district have air conditioning.
“I thank the Lord that we did not have to start this semester early,” Maddaleni said in an interview, “and we did not have to worry about school being canceled.”
