This article was published by The Energy Mix on June 27, 2024.
School’s out in Canada, and not a moment too soon for students sweltering in classrooms that urgently need heat adaptation and resilience upgrades.
As extreme heat days from late spring to early fall overheat Canada’s schools more often, experts, educators, and parents are urging greater awareness and investment to help cool things down, reports CBC News.
Exhibit A could be Sts. Cosmas and Damian Catholic School in Toronto. Built in the 1950s, the building doesn’t have air conditioning.
“You’re always sweating a lot and you’re always focusing on: ‘Oh my God, I want to cool down,’” 13-year-old Carmine Pantano told CBC. “I can feel a little bit dizzy when it’s too hot.”
The school is trying hard to keep its students comfortable and safe: Lowered window shades, open windows where possible, lights off, and a cooling centre in the library. Tower fans in every classroom also pitch in, but it isn’t enough. Twelve outdoor misting centres are being used at various schools as a pilot project.
Sara Concordia, whose young daughter attends another Toronto Catholic District School Board (TCDSB) school, told CBC that classroom temperatures at the school have gone as high as 30℃—without factoring in humidity.
That’s far in excess of what is considered safe, Caroline Metz, managing director of climate resilience and health at the University of Waterloo’s Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation, told CBC. Ideally, indoor temperatures should sit below 26℃. Above that, health risks grow, and sustained exposure to indoor temperatures about 31℃ “can be dangerous for everyone,” Metz said.
High indoor temperatures are particularly hazardous for children, said Eric Coker, senior scientist for the B.C. Centre for Disease Control. Children have higher metabolic rates, so “their demand for cooling off is going to be higher.”
Children who regularly move from overheated schools to homes that are themselves sweltering are at even greater risk because their bodies (and minds) get no reprieve from heat, Metz told The Energy Mix.
Further danger lies in the fact that children may not understand that the sudden onset of heat stroke symptoms—dizziness, stomach cramps, nausea—means they need urgently to find a place to cool down.
“Schools need to be ratcheting up the resilience to environmental conditions that are clearly being impacted by climate change,” Coker added.
But school boards are currently expected to pay for those upgrades out of their current, severely limited budgets.
“School boards have the autonomy, accountability, and responsibility to ensure their facilities meet regulatory requirements and to ensure programming and operations are responsive to extreme weather conditions to ensure students are best supported,” is how Kevin Lee, press secretary to Alberta Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides, put it, in response to a query from the CBC.
Such expectations mean many schools across Canada will not be able to afford air conditioning, said longtime TCDSB trustee Maria Rizzo.
“It’s too expensive,” she told CBC. “We have to replace roofs, we have to replace boilers, we have to replace windows. We have to do all of the maintenance that needs to be done” from the same budget, she said.
While she confirms that those most at-risk do need air conditioning, Metz said much can be done through passive cooling methods like painting school roof tops white, opening windows at night, installing window shades or awnings, and planting shade trees and other greenery. Those measures are inexpensive and far more sustainable than air conditioning, since they require no electricity.
Efforts at adaptation will offer considerable return on investment, Metz added.
“When considering physical damage to property and infrastructure (which is not at all the same as human health and lives), the generally accepted ratio is, every dollar invested in adaptation today saves $3 to $8 in avoided physical damages over a 10-year time period,” Metz told The Mix.
“It would be expected that investing in adaptation that protects human lives would yield returns far exceeding this,” she added, pointing to the profound ethical questions when one begins to consider “the cost of a life and lost quality of life.”
And then there is the power that schools hold as educators.
“Schools could launch an education campaign on extreme weather risk—including extreme heat—and then highlight the solutions that would help ensure people are safe in their indoor spaces,” Metz told CBC.
Be the first to comment