It’s getting hotter in classrooms and on playgrounds – schools aren’t ready to handle extreme temperatures

As Phoenix hit a hundred seventeen degrees in July twenty twenty-six, children were heading to school during some of the year's hottest days. More U.S. school districts now start their academic year earlier—mid-July through August—driven by state funding incentives and efforts to reduce summer learning loss. But according to Arizona State University researchers who study heat and student health, schools are largely unprepared. Forty-one percent of districts with air conditioning need system upgrades, and installing new systems where they're missing could cost forty billion dollars. The impact is real: students take sixteen percent more absences on days above ninety degrees, test scores decline in heat, and children face greater heat-illness risk than adults. Some schools are responding with shade trees and adjusted sports schedules, but funding remains the main barrier to broader adaptation.

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