School districts are quickly investing in cooling solutions as classrooms and playgrounds heat up

Ylenia Aguilar raised her two sons in Arizona, first in Tucson and then in Phoenix, so they're familiar with scorching heat. Just recently, Phoenix saw temperatures of 100 degrees Fahrenheit or higher for the 100th consecutive year, breaking the record set in 1993.

She recalls frightening moments, “when I saw soccer kids and my own kids fainting because they had, you know, heat-related illnesses,” she said. “I saw my sons dehydrated.”

Many schoolyards in the U.S. like hers are paved with heat-absorbing asphalt and don't even provide shade for play areas. The buildings are often constructed with wall and roof materials that radiate heat into the interior. Children are also more susceptible to heat-related illnesses than adults. Their bodies have more difficulty regulating themselves in extreme heat, in part because they sweat less and can therefore dehydrate more quickly. Climate change is exacerbating the risks. Heat-related school closures are becoming more common, according to a report by the Center for Climate Integrity and the company Resilient Analytics.

There is also growing data on temperature inequality and the effects of heat. Poorer neighborhoods and communities of color, like Aguilar's, can be as much as 3.9 degrees warmer than richer and whiter neighborhoods, leaving students and teachers to sweat in a warming world. Extreme temperatures also affect learning, performance and concentration.

There are known methods for cooling schools and residential areas. “When the solutions are so tangible and readily available,” says Joe Allen, associate professor and director of the Healthy Buildings program at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, these conditions are “unacceptable.”

In Phoenix, Aguilar took on a leadership role, serving on the school board and helping pass a $50 million bond that funded a number of solutions in her school district, Osborn Elementary.

Other schools, like Aguilar's, are also beginning to spend money on these repairs.

Cool floor surfaces

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

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

As the students at the private school learned, paved surfaces heat up very quickly in the sun. They absorb solar energy and slowly radiate it back out as heat, causing the air temperature to rise by up to 3.9 °C.

Cooling playgrounds and streets by increasing reflection is nothing new, but interest in it has grown, along with an understanding of how the accumulation of heat can affect entire neighborhoods (so-called urban heat islands), says Daniel Metzger, a fellow at Columbia Law School who studies these passive technologies for climate change adaptation.

“And as climate change worsens, I think adaptation measures like this are becoming increasingly important,” he said.

Recently, workers installed the same cool surface in the parking lot of the Science, Arts and Entrepreneurship School to meet the school's sustainability goals and its efforts to minimize heat. Both times, roofing manufacturer GAF donated the coatings and labor. Without them, the school would have had to raise money, said Scott Starowicz, the school's co-founder and chief financial officer.

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

Cool roofs and window films

East of Los Angeles, roofs in the Chaffey Joint Union High School district reached 140 degrees Fahrenheit earlier, officials said. Hot roofs can make temperatures in upper-floor classrooms unbearable.

This affected many children. Chaffey is the second largest high school district in California with 24,000 students. Almost 65% of them are Latino or Hispanic.

Chaffey has spent $11.4 million in bond and maintenance funds since 2017 to convert asphalt shingle roofs to cool white roofs, part of a countywide conservation and sustainability effort. That's important as California continues to warm; last July was the hottest on record.

These roofs – as well as window films, paints and other technologies – reflect some of the sun's incoming radiation away from the building rather than allowing it to enter the building as heat. These are some of the simplest and most cost-effective measures a district can take.

Experts agree that cool roofs lower indoor temperatures and reduce the need for air conditioning. Chaffey's roofs currently sit at about 32°C.

The district has also invested in steel shading systems, trees and thermometers that measure factors such as temperature and humidity to monitor heat stress. “There is a high level of urgency,” said Rick Wiersma, deputy director of business services.

Cooler, greener schoolyards

On hot days in Berkeley, California, Sharon Gamson Danks often saw her children and their classmates sitting in the shade at the edge of their school building. They also huddled under playground equipment.

“When they're outside, they get overheated from two sides, both from direct sunlight and from very hot surfaces,” said V. Kelly Turner, an associate professor at UCLA.

More and more schools are now removing hot asphalt, turf or rubber mats and instead creating green schoolyards, which can include grass, gardens, mulch and trees. California alone has allocated more than $121 million for these measures between 2022 and 2023. Experts say trees are one of the best ways to cool down – they reduce air and surface temperatures, and research has found that the shade of trees alone can reduce the heat children face by as much as 70°F.

At Parkway Elementary in Sacramento, a city that has led the urban tree-planting movement for years, a $400,000 donation this summer enabled about 50 heat- and drought-resistant trees – including California live oaks, Chinese elms and ginkgo trees – to replace an old, rusty ball stop and one of three underused soccer fields with artificial turf. The project is part of a schoolyard forest initiative in California to increase tree canopies at public schools, especially in underserved communities.

Chamberlain Segrest, environmental manager for the Sacramento City Unified School District, said it will take years for the trees to mature, but “we want to think more long-term about the needs of our students and families. So, even though these trees will take a while to mature and begin to have all their positive impacts, they bring a whole host of benefits immediately.”

Pay for the necessary changes

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

For example, the Department of Energy offers grants through the Renew America's Schools program, and the Environmental Protection Agency has the Climate Resilient Schools program, but these often do not cover the full cost, and sometimes schools lack the staff to apply for and administer grants. Increased maintenance costs are also a problem.

Relying on grants “can completely exacerbate the gap between rich and poor” when it comes to mitigating climate change and adapting to its damage, says UCLA's Turner. “Because only the universities with the most resources can apply for these grants.”

Many believe schools shouldn't be left to their own devices. Each of these individual solutions makes a difference, says Greg Kats, founder of the Smart Surfaces Coalition. But if you combine efforts with local government or neighborhoods, “you can increase the comfort level in a school by about 10 degrees. That means the kids can play outside. That means the windows can be open. That means you don't have the loud creaking of an air conditioner,” he says.

“It's just kind of integrating different strategies across a larger geographic area,” he added. “You're actually changing the school environment.”

In Phoenix, Aguilar's efforts improved the district's air conditioning and installed shade structures in playgrounds, bus stops and yards. The work is ongoing; Osborn County recently received funding to plant 100 more trees and create more shade.

“I think for me it was like it was just getting hotter,” Aguilar said of her experience. “I knew we had to do something.”

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