Friday, September 5, 2014

Hot Heads Make Low Scores?

The average classroom temperature for students in Chicago depends on which school you attend.  Climate controlled classes are not in the majority of schools.  While I'm sure the administrators have cool offices with window units, students and teachers are left to swelter in rooms with little air flow and rising temperatures.  So what is the big deal about how hot a students classroom is? Does this have anything to do with climate change?  Chicago and other midwest cities suffer through winters and welcome a warm seat for studies.  Summer time however is an entirely different scenario.  Below is a graph of the Back to School temps in Chicago only for the month of September. These are averages for max (blue) median (red) and min (green) temperatures.  While at first glance it may not seem as if there is much difference between the years but the main point is that over the past nearly 20 years the temperature has gone up and not down.  Now I know what you are thinking.....whats the big deal and why does it matter?


It matters because outdoor temperatures influence indoor classroom temperatures and air quality.  How is it that all prisoners are kept at ideal temperatures that keep them comfy regardless of the weather, but our most prized people in society, those whom we are educating and investing in to become the next generation of leaders, workers and employers have to suffer when they are inside being held captive (total pun intended but I digress). My point is that our children regardless of age and or ethnicity deserve to have healthy working conditions just as any other employed population does.  Because of the expressed concern over a warming climate I think people have missed the connection between hot classrooms and performance levels of students.  Now it is an issue in my opinion for a few reasons; schools are beginning earlier or going year round back in the day students were not indoors during the hottest months of the year. Next is the unexpected fluctuations of heat extremes, we can predict the weather but we don't know how hot November 2014 will be until we experience it.  Finally it is staying warmer longer into fall in some places where fall use to be cooler, this exposes all children to increased temperatures during the school year as well. Looking at the figure below from the Chicago Climate Action Plan one can see what the impact of emissions of green house gases (gases that trap heat in the earths atmospher) on the heat wave events of Chicago. 



While the figure does not indicate when these heat events will occur it does express that heat waves will become more frequent and it is more likely ecologically speaking that there will be more intense heat waves during warmer times of the year.  Could you imagine sitting in a classroom that is 85 degrees F? There is no city worker that has to endure such conditions but our children do! There are 664 schools in the city of Chicago that serve over 400,000 students and approximately 40% of those students are African American and 45% of them Hispanic/Latino.  Students of color make up nearly 90% of public school students. However the city of Chicago and CPS have been working fervently to address what I see as a public health issue as well as an environmental justice issue.  Of the 664 schools in the past two years 157 of them have received air conditioning. The effort is a part of a $20 million investment that also distributes those monies for a/c equitably across the landscape. 

The design of more efficient learning spaces is crucial for us as a society as we try to create intelligent thinkers and problem solvers. The quality of your environment impacts the level of your performance mentally, and physically.  For students in disadvantaged settings where they live in a food desert and have an unhealthy diet, as well as a built environment with little nature, unsafe neighborhoods and schools that make you sweat one need not wonder as to how underperformance is so common in certain communities.

If we are serious as a society about sustainability we have to address the inequity in our built environment, in our education system as well as our health system. We can not have cities that thrive simply because they are siphoning resources from another group of people in the city.  We can not have a population of residents that we don't invest in and allow for them to reach their full potential.  I'm pleased at the advances CPS has made however 100% should be the goal before the summer of 2020 in my opinion. Another aspect of this conversation is the ability of the systems to be adopted in these very old buildings.  As we transform our built structures to be more efficient or serve us more appropriately there is no one size fits all.  The electrical loads from these conversions can be immense and many schools must be completely rewired for these systems to put into place.  

For the most part we need to understand as a community of color how climate influences our lives and wellbeing in the city. We need to learn what our role is in adapting to those changes and be clear with our policy makers and decision makers what we need from them to protect our homes, health and businesses from the looming threats climate change imposes. Stay cool and I hope this school year brings us all great memories and new insight.



Online resources: 
Indoor Air Quality Scientific Finding
http://www.iaqscience.lbl.gov/performance-temp-school.html

Healthy Schools
http://healthyschools.cefpi.org/temperature.html

Follow me on twitter: @greenkels

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