School districts race to invest in cooling solutions as facilities heat up
Ylenia Aguilar raised her sons in Arizona, so they’re no strangers to scorching heat.
She remembers “seeing soccer kids and my own children pass out and faint from, you know, heatrelated illnesses.”
Schools across the U.S. are carpeted in heat-absorbing asphalt and lack shade. The buildings were often made with materials that radiated heat into indoor spaces. Children are more vulnerable to heat illness than adults, and extreme temperatures affect learning, performance and concentration. Heat-related school closures are becoming more frequent.
The burden of extreme heat is not felt equally. Low-income neighborhoods and communities of color can be as much as 7 degrees hotter than richer and whiter neighborhoods.
Yet there are well-known ways to cool down schools and neighborhoods.
In 2022, students at a school near Atlanta pointed thermometers onto their basketball court and got a reading of 105 degrees. A roofing manufacturer donated a solar-reflective coating and helped them paint it on. They took another reading. This time it was 95 degrees.
Paved surfaces get really hot in the sun. They absorb solar energy and slowly re-radiate it out as heat, increasing air temperatures by as much as 7 degrees.
Cooling playgrounds and roads by making them more reflective is not new, but interest has been growing along with more understanding of the way the accumulation can affect neighborhoods, known as urban heat islands, said Daniel Metzger, a fellow at Columbia Law School.
The Science, Arts and Entrepreneurship School recently had that same cool surface painted on their parking lot. Both times, the coatings and labor were donated. Without that, the school would have had to raise funds, said Scott Starowicz, the school’s co-founder and chief financial officer.
East of Los Angeles, roofs across the Chaffey Joint Union High School District once reached 140 degrees. Warm roofs mean upper-floor classrooms could get hot, which would affect a lot of Chaffey’s students, nearly 65% of who are Latino or Hispanic.
Chaffey has spent $11.4 million in bond money and maintenance funds to convert asphalt shingle roofs to white cool roofing since 2017.
These roofs — as well as window films, paints and other technologies — reflect part of the incoming solar radiation away from a building, rather than allowing it to transfer inside as heat. These are some of the easiest and least costly actions a district can take.
Experts agree cool roofing lowers indoor temperature and reduces the need for AC.
The district has also invested in steel shade structures, trees and temperature devices to monitor heat stress.
On hot days, Sharon Gamson Danks remembers seeing her kids and their peers sitting in the shade along the edges of their school building.
More schools are tearing out hot asphalt, turf or rubber mats in favor of grass, gardens, mulch or trees. Experts say trees are one of the best ways to cool things down.
At Parkway Elementary in Sacramento, trees replaced turf this summer thanks to a grant. The project is part of a California schoolyard forests effort to increase tree canopy in public schools, especially in underserved communities.
For the hottest schools, these solutions are often out of reach.
Federal agencies offer grants, but they often don’t cover the full cost, and schools sometimes don’t have the staff to apply for and manage grants. Increased maintenance costs are also a concern.