How to Prepare for Climate Change: Put Air Conditioning in Schools

Since late August, schools around Baltimore, Chicago, Cincinnati, Minneapolis and Fargo, North Dakota (Fargo, North Dakota!) have had to shut their doors and send their students home because of excessive heat. The start of the school year has, unfortunately, coincided with an end-of-summer heat wave across the Midwest that's now settling over the East Coast. As a result, the kind of northern school districts that regularly have to plan for "snow days" have been confounded instead by a different kind of climactic problem: They don't have air conditioning.

If you live in, say, Atlanta, Houston or Miami, this probably sounds unthinkable to you (I thought the same thing until I looked up my own 120-year-old elementary school in Chicago and realized it was never air conditioned, either). Newer and southern schools tend be air conditioned by default. But many northern school buildings predate the widespread adoption of air conditioning, and it won't necessary work to just stick window units in every classroom because of complications with air quality.