With schools closing across Massachusetts last week due to the heat wave, we're now getting the periodic realization: lots of Massachusetts schools don't have air conditioning. And those that do, as Haverhill illustrated, often have incomplete and outdated systems.
This isn't, as this column from Andrew Ahern of Sunrise Worcester noted last week, a problem that is going to go away:
Ninety degree Junes. A year's worth of extreme heat in the matter of two spring months. Individual day records and annual average temperatures smashed. People staying indoors to avoid the heat, with businesses, community, and the liberating feeling of summer suffering as a result. More air conditioning, using more energy, making it harder for us to transition to a clean and renewable economy in time to stay within safe levels of warming and avoid days like these.
This piece in Grist connects climate change explicitly back to school buildings and--not a shock--inequitable impact:
In looking at the schools that need the most work to prepare for climate change, Schifter saw a familiar pattern. “The need is greatest in low-income communities and communities of color,” she said. These school districts have a harder time getting the money to pay for upgrades, she told Grist, and so instead they end up frittering away dollars on the maintenance of long-outdated systems.
...see that A/C system in Haverhill.
Lest this all seem hopeless (though do read the Grist piece for a bit of hope), I have been taking some hope as well from this Rethinking Schools editorial on the New Green Deal.
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