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School districts race to invest in cooling solutions as classrooms and playgrounds heat up

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School districts race to invest in cooling solutions as classrooms and playgrounds heat up
News

News

School districts race to invest in cooling solutions as classrooms and playgrounds heat up

2024-09-09 21:28 Last Updated At:21:30

Ylenia Aguilar raised her two sons in Arizona — first in Tucson and later Phoenix, so they’re no strangers to scorching heat. Just recently, Phoenix hit its 100th straight day at or above 100 F (37.8 C), shattering the record set in 1993.

She remembers scary moments “seeing soccer kids and my own children pass out and faint from, you know, heat-related illnesses,” she said. “It was seeing my sons dehydrated.”

Scores of U.S. schoolyards like hers are carpeted in heat-absorbing asphalt, with no shade even for play areas. The buildings were often made with wall and roofing materials that radiate heat into indoor spaces. Kids are also more vulnerable to heat illness than adults. Their bodies have a harder time self-regulating in extreme heat in part because they sweat less, so they can become dehydrated faster. Climate change is heightening the risks. School closures related to heat are becoming more frequent, according to a report by the Center for Climate Integrity and the firm Resilient Analytics.

There is also accumulating data on temperature inequality and the effects of heat. Low-income neighborhoods and communities of color, which describes Aguilar’s, can be as much as 7 F (3.9 C) hotter than richer and whiter neighborhoods, leaving students and educators to swelter in a warming world. Extreme temperatures also affect learning, performance and concentration.

Yet there are well-known ways to cool down schools and neighborhoods. “When the solutions are so at hand and readily available,” said Joe Allen, associate professor and director of the Healthy Buildings program at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, these conditions are “unacceptable.”

In Phoenix, Aguilar became a leader, joining the school board and helping to pass a $50 million bond that funded a number of solutions in her Osborn Elementary School District.

Other schools like Aguilar’s are also starting to spend on these fixes.

On a hot day in 2022, students at a school near Atlanta pointed thermometers onto their basketball court and got a reading of 105 F (about 40.5 C).

A roofing manufacturer donated a bright blue, solar-reflective coating and helped them paint it on. They took another reading, this time it was 95 F (35 C).

As students of the private school learned, 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 F (3.9 C).

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 entire neighborhoods, known as urban heat islands, said Daniel Metzger, a fellow at Columbia Law School who studies these passive climate adaptation technologies.

“And as climate change gets worse... I think adaptation measures like this are only going to become more and more important,” he said.

Workers recently rolled that same cool surface on the parking lot at the Science, Arts and Entrepreneurship School as part of the school’s sustainability goals and efforts to minimize heat. Both times, the roofing manufacturer GAF donated the coatings and labor. Without that, the school would have had to raise funds, said Scott Starowicz, the school’s co-founder and chief financial officer.

With the new, cool surfaces, Starowicz said he feels “like we’re doing our part” to mitigate heat.

East of Los Angeles, roofs across the Chaffey Joint Union High School District used to reach 140 F (60 C), officials said. Hot roofs can make upper-floor classrooms unbearable.

This affected a lot of kids. Chaffey is the second-largest high school district in California with 24,000 students. Nearly 65% are Latino or Hispanic.

Chaffey has now spent $11.4 million in bond money and maintenance funds to convert asphalt shingle roofs to white cool roofing since 2017 — part of district-wide conservation and sustainability efforts. It’s important as California heats up; this past July was its hottest on record.

These roofs — as well as window films, paints and other technologies — reflect a portion of the incoming solar radiation away from a building, rather than allowing it to transfer into the building as heat. These are some of the easiest and least costly actions a district can take.

Experts agree cool roofing does bring down the indoor temperature and reduce the need for AC. Chaffey’s roofs now sit at around 90 F (32 C).

The district has also invested in steel shade structures, trees and thermometers that consider things like temperature and humidity to monitor heat stress. “There’s a high level of urgency,” said Rick Wiersma, assistant superintendent of business services.

On hot days in Berkeley, Calif., Sharon Gamson Danks remembers seeing her kids and their peers sitting in slivers of shade along the edges of their school building. They’d huddle under play structures, too.

“When they’re outside, they’re kind of getting overheated from two directions, both from direct sun exposure but also from really hot surfaces,” said V. Kelly Turner, an associate professor at UCLA.

Now more schools are tearing out hot asphalt or turf or rubber mats in favor of green schoolyards, which can include grass, gardens, mulch and trees. Between 2022 and 2023, California alone granted more than $121 million for these efforts. Experts say trees are one of the best ways to cool things down — they lower air and surface temperatures, and research has found that shade from trees alone can reduce the heat children experience by as much as 70 F (38.9 C).

At Parkway Elementary in Sacramento, a city that has led the urban tree planting movement for years, about 50 heat and drought-tolerant trees — including coast live oaks, Chinese elms and ginkgos — replaced an old, rusty backstop and one of three underused, turf soccer fields this summer thanks to a $400,000 grant. The project is part of a California schoolyard forests effort to increase tree canopy in public schools, especially in underserved communities.

Chamberlain Segrest, environmental sustainability manager at Sacramento City Unified School District, said the trees will take years to mature, but “we want to think more long term about what our students and families need, and so planting these trees, even though it’s going to take time for them to mature and provide the full host of benefits, there’s a slew of benefits they provide immediately.”

For the hottest schools, these solutions are often out of reach.

The Department of Energy offers Renew America’s Schools grants and the Environmental Protection Agency has the Climate Resilient Schools program, for example, but they often don’t cover the full costs, and schools sometimes don’t have the staff to apply for and manage grants. Increased maintenance costs are also a concern.

Relying on grant money “can completely exacerbate the haves and the have-nots” when it comes to reducing climate change and adapting to its harms, said UCLA’s Turner, “because it’s going to be the schools that have more resources” that can go after these grants.

Many believe schools shouldn’t be left on their own. Each of these individual solutions makes a difference, said Greg Kats, founder of the Smart Surfaces Coalition. But combining efforts with a local government or neighborhood means “you can add about ten degrees of comfort to a school, which means that the kids can be outside playing. It means that the windows can be open. It means you don’t have the loud grinding of an air conditioning,” he said.

“It’s just sort of integration, right, of different strategies over a larger geographic area,” he added. “You’re really sort of transforming the school environment.”

In Phoenix, Aguilar’s efforts improved the district’s air conditioning and installed shading structures at playgrounds, bus stops and courtyards. The work is ongoing; Osborn district recently got the money to plant 100 more trees and add more shade.

“I think for me, that was like, it’s only going to get hotter,” Aguilar said of her experience. “I knew that we needed to take action.”

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This story was first published on Sep. 8, 2024. It was updated on Sep. 9, 2024 to correct a conversion of temperature difference from Fahrenheit to Celsius. It is 38.9 degrees Celsius, not 21 degrees Celsius.

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment.

Ronnie Jefferies paints the parking lot at Science, Arts and Entrepreneurship School to help cool it by making it more reflective, Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024, in Mableton, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

Ronnie Jefferies paints the parking lot at Science, Arts and Entrepreneurship School to help cool it by making it more reflective, Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024, in Mableton, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

Ronnie Jefferies works on the parking lot at Science, Arts and Entrepreneurship School where it is being repainted to help cool it by making it more reflective, Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024, in Mableton, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

Ronnie Jefferies works on the parking lot at Science, Arts and Entrepreneurship School where it is being repainted to help cool it by making it more reflective, Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024, in Mableton, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

Ronnie Jefferies works on the parking lot at Science, Arts and Entrepreneurship School where it is being repainted to help cool it by making it more reflective, Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024, in Mableton, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

Ronnie Jefferies works on the parking lot at Science, Arts and Entrepreneurship School where it is being repainted to help cool it by making it more reflective, Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024, in Mableton, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

Ronnie Jefferies paints the parking lot at Science, Arts and Entrepreneurship School to help cool it by making it more reflective, Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024, in Mableton, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

Ronnie Jefferies paints the parking lot at Science, Arts and Entrepreneurship School to help cool it by making it more reflective, Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024, in Mableton, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House on Monday named a veteran agent to serve as acting FBI director after the official who'd been expected to run the bureau on an interim basis following the departure of Christopher Wray retired after nearly 30 years.

Brian Driscoll was tapped to lead the FBI pending the Senate confirmation of Kash Patel, who is President Donald Trump's pick for director. The move came hours after Paul Abbate, who served for the last four years as Wray's deputy and had been in line to serve as acting director, told colleagues in an email that he was retiring.

"When the Director asked me to stay on past my mandatory date for a brief time, I did so to help ensure continuity and the best transition for the FBI. Now, with new leadership inbound, after nearly four years in the deputy role, I am departing the FBI today,” Abbate wrote in the email, which was obtained by The Associated Press.

Abbate's abrupt departure after a 28-year FBI career creates additional transition for a law enforcement agency that had already been preparing for upheaval in the event Patel is confirmed. A Trump loyalist, Patel has repeatedly criticized FBI leadership and decision-making and has alarmed Democrats with statements that suggest he would be willing to use the FBI to exact retribution on Trump adversaries.

Abbate's email did not identify who might succeed him, but the White House included Driscoll on a list of officials being tapped to lead agencies on an acting basis. Driscoll was named by Wray last week as special agent in charge of the Newark field office and before that had served as commander of the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team.

“We will work closely with the current FBI leadership team and the transition team at the Department of Justice to serve as a bridge between the FBI’s previous permanent leadership team and the next one,” Driscoll wrote in an email to colleagues. “In the meantime, our goal is to keep the focus on the Bureau’s essential work, those we do the work with, and those we do the work for — the American people.”

He said Robert Kissane, a top counterterrorism official in the New York office, will serve as acting deputy director.

Wray's final day was Sunday, making Abbate acting director, though he only stayed in the role for a day.

Abbate held a variety of leadership roles in his nearly three-decade career at the FBI, including head of the bureau's Detroit and Washington field offices and executive assistant director for the criminal, cyber, response and services branch. He was named deputy director, the No. 2 position responsible for the FBI's investigative activities, in 2021.

“As you move forward, continue to stay true to our core values, be there for our partners, and take care of those who serve alongside you. Thank you for your service,” Abbate wrote.

Wray was named by Trump during his first term and had been director for more than seven years. Wray announced his retirement last month, more than a week after Trump said he wanted Patel to be the director.

FILE - Paul Abbate, Deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), testifies during a Senate Judiciary Oversight Committee hearing to examine Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and related surveillance authorities, June 13, 2023, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)

FILE - Paul Abbate, Deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), testifies during a Senate Judiciary Oversight Committee hearing to examine Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and related surveillance authorities, June 13, 2023, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)

Kash Patel, President-elect Donald Trump's pick to be the director of the FBI, poses for a photo with Cabinet picks, other nominees and appointments, at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, Saturday, Jan. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

Kash Patel, President-elect Donald Trump's pick to be the director of the FBI, poses for a photo with Cabinet picks, other nominees and appointments, at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, Saturday, Jan. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

FBI Director Christopher Wray speaks during a farewell ceremony for Attorney General Merrick Garland at the Department of Justice, Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

FBI Director Christopher Wray speaks during a farewell ceremony for Attorney General Merrick Garland at the Department of Justice, Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

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