https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/01/us/michgan-schools-heat.html
As a Floridian, why in the fuck are there schools in the US outside of maybe Alaska that don’t have AC wtf are y’all doing up there
Local town budgets are like 80% police, 10% schools, 10% everything else. Here in NJ the attitude has always been that the kids and staff suffer through a couple weeks of hot weather in June and it's not a big deal, but now we're getting 90+ degree days starting in early May so it's a much bigger problem.
Most school buildings in my area are at 70+ years old. They are poorly insulated, heated with central boilers and radiators, and it would be very expensive to either retrofit the building with a central AC system or put a mini split in every classroom.
Meanwhile, cops idle their SUV patrol cars for hours blasting the AC while browsing Tinder.
My favorite is when they do that shit while "protecting" the utility guys while they're working on the road in the summer heat for less pay.
80% police, 10% schools, 10% everything else
someone who is good at the economy please help me budget this my family is dying from heat stroke
I’m not saying it’s needed everywhere, I mean schools specifically. Schools should have top of the line HVAC systems along with a bunch of other stuff because they’re used as shelters in emergencies. You should put AC in your schools even when it normally doesn’t get above 70F in the summer so when a heat wave hits people have somewhere to go.
Similarly schools in Florida should have heat systems with much greater capacity than has ever been needed
But also many parts of the EU that “don’t need AC” absolutely do. I’m looking at you Italy, you have the same climate as Florida you’re just delusional. But even the UK gets a couple weeks of “heat wave” (summer) every year and the whole island whines like it’s never happened before and they could never have thought to prepare.
Yeah. But we don't have money for schools to have books, let alone top of the line ac units. Only money for the police.
Yeah I've been to Italy and it can feel like opening a boiling pot of water into your face for 12 hours at a time, and their solution is a fan, or if you're lucky it's some weird fucking AC that has like a quarter the power of a regular small window AC unit, and you can kind of stand under it and die slightly less quickly
Sorry wasn’t meaning to be a dick, just yelling at the situation in general. Rhetorical ranting
That's such bullshit. You DO need air conditioning. It's part of the basic needs of housing - being able to control the temperature!
I remember when I moved to LA, I asked my new roommate where the AC control was. He said there wasn't one. Evidently I had the funniest expression on my face, according to my brother.
They said, Oh, LA doesn't get that hot, you won't need it! Bullshit, it gets hot enough. Just open the windows, they said! I did. Then the noise from the street came in. Then a big truck drove by and stunk up the place with exhaust fumes. Then the wind stopped blowing for a few minutes and I got to sweat.
I don't care where you are, air conditioning is an absolute necessity.
That’s such bullshit. You DO need air conditioning. It’s part of the basic needs of housing - being able to control the temperature!
Imagine building a house, they put in a thermostat, and you go “To control the temperature, right?” and they go “Yeah but you can only make it hotter” Utterly deranged
Pretty much this, most buildings and homes for the most part still don't have AC up here which makes it pretty miserable whenever there's a heatwave. Thankfully its been a dry heat.
Homes I get it. Personally when I move out of this hell if my place doesn’t have AC I’m getting a window unit day 1 so that I at least have one room to retreat to in the heat. But I get why they don’t have it central AC for sure. But schools are frequently used as shelters in extreme weather and other emergency - They should have good climate control.
Maybe they could’ve used that money they were given for covid specifically to upgrade ventilation systems to upgrade ventilation systems instead of just paying for more cops :amerikkka:
Murica schools are supposed to double as shelter's but let's be real, that's too much domestic planning for the likes of this country.
We don’t have snow plows but we do have central heating
I was in middle school in the 00's and my school in a southern state didn't have AC. Of course this was like 15+ years ago so the earth hadnt melted as much.
Those goddamn kids should be grateful, because this is the coldest year of the rest of their lives
"This year will be warmer than last year. On the other hand, it will be cooler than next year."
:hoxha-turt:
Countdown to centrists demanding for-profit private school vouchers funded by tax dollars because "at least they have air conditioning" -- ignoring of course that everywhere could have air conditioning if it was funded, but "that's too expensive" (while massive handouts to people who buy mansions with the proceeds isn't?)
i'm out here living in the midwest without air con and it's been pretty miserable
Doesn’t it get into the 90s in the summer there :scared:
where I am in particularly, yeah, sometimes it does. shit sucks. this year (4th year at my current place) we have a window unit to put in this weekend to try.
you just kind of deal with it honestly. it's hot and you be dripping all day and night long. is what it is.
you just kind of deal with it honestly. it’s hot and you be dripping all day and night long. is what it is.
When I was a kid our AC would go out for a week or two every summer. Shit suuuuucked. The only trick I really figured out besides “don’t move and be miserable” was putting damp rags in the freezer to put on my body
my family had consistent central air when i was a kid, living in a somewhat hotter climate. i like to stick my head in the freezer when the fan is running.
my neighbors made a 'ghetto AC' where they would stick ice packs in front of a box fan in the shadiest room and make the littles run to swap em out from the freezer when they melted. Kind of fun but still sad.
renewed concerns about climate change
unlimited genocide on journos THINGS DON'T DISAPPEAR BECAUSE YOU- YOU PERSONALLY -ARE CONCEALING AND LYING ABOUT IT
Malarial 24th century NYT opinion piece writer in his seventh-storey-turned-second-storey office facing the Wall Street canal:
"Climate change isn't an issue - the Earth's average temperature has been a stable 21°C for decades now" :very-intelligent:
Here’s the article.
High heat shut down schools in Grand Rapids, Mich., and Pittsburgh on Thursday, forcing students and teachers to stay at home in the face of rising temperatures and inadequate air conditioning. In Detroit, the conditions led administrators to close that city’s schools three hours earlier than usual on Thursday, and similar plans were in place for Friday for the city’s 53,000 students.
In Pittsburgh, 40 schools in a district with more than 18,000 students shifted to remote learning, citing health concerns about sweltering classrooms, the district announced. In Grand Rapids, in western Michigan, home to 17,000 students, administrators canceled school for the remainder of the week as temperatures climbed to the 90s on Thursday.
The temperatures in some school buildings were “simply too warm,” the superintendent of schools, Leadriane Roby, said in a statement. “That not only makes the learning environment a challenge, but it also raises a safety concern.”
Poorly cooled or heated school buildings in the United States is far from a new concern, but it is an intensifying worry as more school districts are grappling with aging infrastructure and the effects of climate change. Older buildings often lack central air-conditioning, and even if window air-conditioners are present, they can be ineffective in classrooms packed with dozens of children.
A report in 2020 from the U.S. Government Accountability Office concluded that roughly 41 percent of school districts need to update or replace heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems in at least half of their schools.
Many school districts across the Midwest complete the school year as late as mid-June, making heat a problem in the final weeks of classes.
A high-pressure system over the Great Lakes has been trapping hot air rising from the ground, resulting in temperatures that are 10 to 20 degrees above average. Highs in the upper 80s to low 90s from the Great Lakes into New England are expected on Thursday and Friday, and some areas in the region could come close to tying or even breaking daily records.
Some relief will come this weekend, beginning on Saturday in New England and bringing lower temperatures to the Great Lakes toward the end of the weekend.
While there were no immediate reports of students sickened by the heat, administrators said that they made the decisions pre-emptively to avoid health issues. In several districts, after-school activities and sports were also canceled.
In Pittsburgh, free meals were made available for pickup in more than a dozen locations on Thursday and Friday mornings to families who needed them.
Alan N. Johnson, the superintendent of the East Allegheny County schools in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area, said in an interview on Thursday afternoon that he was closely monitoring the heat in his school buildings but had so far managed to keep them open.
Outside, the temperature was 86 degrees. Inside, he said, the second floor of the building that houses middle and high school students had reached 83 degrees as the school day was nearly complete.
Teachers were distributing bottled water to students and urging them to stay hydrated, Mr. Johnson said, while fans had been made available for use in the hottest classrooms. In order to help students stay comfortable, he said, the dress code was more loosely enforced.
While administrators had weighed whether to send students home for the day, they worried that many students, especially those from low-income families, might not have air-conditioning available at home, either. Shifting to remote learning was an option, but it also raised the concern that it could be a burden for working parents.
The school year was set to end in the district on Friday, and Mr. Johnson said that he was focused on keeping students safe.
“We’re no longer pushing educational attainment,” Mr. Johnson said. “We just have to be here. If we don’t show up, we have to make the day up, and we’re just trying to get through the day.”
A report in 2020 from the U.S. Government Accountability Office concluded that roughly 41 percent of school districts need to update or replace heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems in at least half of their schools.
Good thing we have billions to give out for war tho
Fuck them kids I guess
The most wild thing is as part of covid relief we gave schools a ton of money to do exactly that. And they just… didn’t. Idk if the money never made it from the state govs to the schools or what but the federal government gave out like, multiple years of education funding in just a few months specifically to fix shit like this and it just didn’t happen.
Damn I knew that he had them digging into the covid fund for cop hirings, I forgot how all encompassing that aid was supposed to be
Good to know this shithole country will scream and kneejerk itself into tripling cop numbers every time crime hiccups upward by a rounding error, but will do fuck all else
Burn this fucker down and start over.
Wait also y’all are still in school? Schools here got out weeks ago. It’s June what?
