Being inside with no air conditioning during a heat wave sucks. But being inside with no air conditioning during a heat wave with 30 kids ready for summer break is a whole other level of awful.
Driving the news: The heat wave afflicting much of Ontario and Québec has parents and educators raising the alarm about the sorry state (or total absence) of air conditioning in many public schools.
- In Canada’s largest public school board, the Toronto District School Board, 70% of schools lack central air conditioning.
- At Montréal’s Lester B. Pearson School Board, 91% of schools have no A/C.
Why it matters: An overheated school doesn’t just pose health risks to students and teachers, it also measurably reduces how much students learn.
- A 2018 study found that hotter weather reduced students’ performance on standardized tests, and that the higher the temperature was, the worse test scores became — in schools with air conditioning, the effect disappeared.
Zoom out: Overheated classrooms are becoming a more common problem in Canada as summers get hotter. Data stretching from 1953 to 2023 shows the frequency of school days with temperatures above 25 C is increasing in many cities, reaching 31 in Hamilton (up from 23 in 1953), 29 in Winnipeg (up from 21), and 29 in Montréal (up from 20).