As the school year starts earlier, AC systems struggle to keep up

HOUSTON — A growing number of American students are returning to classrooms earlier in the summer. As a result, millions of students attending schools with mounting air-conditioning concerns are more likely to be exposed to excessive heat, affecting everything from test scores to kids’ health.

School board members at Houston Independent School District voted in 2024 to add two weeks to the school calendar in hopes of boosting learning gains. That shifted the first day from Aug. 28 in 2023, to Aug. 12 in both 2024 and 2025.

Students in the state’s largest district were in their seats for some of summer’s hottest days, including four 100-plus degree days during those first two additional weeks of school.

And the district’s aging heating-and-cooling system struggled to keep up. According to Houston ISD data, obtained by Straight Arrow News via a public information request, the district fielded 1,005 “urgent” and “emergency” maintenance requests for its AC systems last August. That includes 196 requests on those four triple-digit days alone.

Classrooms reportedly ‘too hot’

On Aug. 21, 2024, educators at Burbank Middle School reported it was “too hot” in a special needs classroom. At Hogg Middle School, it was “too hot” in classrooms 101, 104, 206, 207 and 213. Brookline Elementary reported that the AC unit was not working in the special education building.

“It’s not something that I think parents are happy with,” Houston parent Lea Kiefer told SAN. “But it’s also something that, quite honestly, what are we going to do?”

Last year, both of Kiefer’s daughters attended Harvard Elementary School, a 98-year-old brick building in Houston’s Heights neighborhood. Maintenance reports show the air conditioning systems on the campus’s left side failed during that mid-August heatwave. Harvard is about twice as old as the average American school building. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 38% of today’s schools were constructed before 1970 — well before the average school considered air conditioning in its building blueprints.

There was “no AC” upstairs or downstairs on Aug. 16, according to the maintenance logs obtained by SAN, and the temperature in one classroom read 90 degrees. That’s 8 degrees above what the district deems acceptable, according to Gianni Ledezma, Houston ISD’s executive director of facility maintenance.

The work order was flagged as an emergency — “something that’s going to stop instruction for the campus,” according to Ledezma.

“Am I going to keep the kid home, because it’s 90 degrees in the classroom?” Kiefer asked. “I’m a working parent. I don’t really have that level of luxury. But I do think that it has a negative impact on the learning environment there.”

How do hot classrooms affect students?

Experts agree. Researchers at Harvard University found that “without air conditioning, each  1°F increase in school year temperature reduces the amount learned that year by 1%.”

Absenteeism and discipline referrals also increase.

“In the heat, you’re just a little more irritable,” said Tony Cattani, principal of Lenape High School in Medfield, New Jersey. Holding school during the peak heat of summer, Cattani told SAN, is “not the best and smartest and efficient way to do it.”

Like most schools in the Mid-Atlantic region, Cattani’s school district doesn’t welcome students back until after Labor Day, but he sees the effects of hot days in May and June.

“Our discipline, our code of conduct would be skyrocketing towards the end of the year,” Cattani told SAN.

In addition to learning outcomes and disciplinary concerns, hot classrooms also present safety issues for millions of children.

A 2020 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that 41% of American school districts — about 36,000 schools — need to update or replace their HVAC systems in at least half of their schools. School officials told the GAO that “there are serious consequences to not maintaining or updating HVAC systems, including lost educational time due to school closings and the potential for mold and air quality issues.”

Children don’t regulate body temperature as well as adults. Since their higher metabolic rate produces more body heat, their personal thermometers run higher. Kids also sweat less. As a result, they are more susceptible to negative health impacts from extreme heat.

And that heat often happens in August.

The ‘dog days of summer’

“August, September are the dog days of summer, the hottest months of the year here in Houston, Texas,” Ledezma told SAN.

“Every spring, every fall, this time of year — August, September — we’re fighting the air conditioning wars,” Houston ISD Superintendent Mike Miles said during a press briefing following the final bell on the first day.

The district made it through Tuesday, Aug. 12, without having to issue any emergency communications from AC complications, according to spokeswoman Alexandra Elizondo.

Other parts of the country had different experiences. District leaders in Bellevue, Kentucky, pushed back the first day of school by three days to Aug. 18, due to HVAC concerns.

“As you know, a functional and comfortable climate is essential for effective teaching and learning,” District Superintendent Misty Middleton wrote in an Aug. 12 letter to parents. “More importantly, your child’s safety and well-being remain our highest priority, and we do not feel it is appropriate to bring students into a building where conditions may be less than ideal.”

Regional differences

Many of Bellevue’s neighboring districts started school in the second week of August, as is typical of that part of the country. In 2023, Pew Research Center reported that more than two-thirds of students in the East South Central U.S. — Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee — returned to school that week.

“The northern tier of states tend to start school later,” said Drew DeSilver, the author of that Pew report, who examined start-date data for more than 1,500 school districts. “And places down further south tend to start earlier; they tend to start more in early to mid-August.”

In Minnesota, DeSilver noted, state ordinance mandates school start after Labor Day, unless the district has received a waiver. Virginia used to have a similar law on the books, before a 2019 amendment allowed schools to open two weeks before Labor Day.

Shifting earlier

Houston is the nation’s eighth-largest school district, but it’s not the first massive system to shift its school start time forward. In 2012, the Los Angeles Unified School District — the nation’s second largest — shifted its start date significantly, from Sept. 7, 2011, to Aug. 14, 2012. This year, the district stuck with that exact date.

Miami-Dade County Public Schools, the nation’s third-largest district, also opened that day.

That can be rough in Florida.

“I’ve witnessed several people pass out because of how hot it is just from transitioning to classes,” said George LaComb, a senior at Lake Buena Vista High School in Orlando.

“I’ve had some instances where I had to go to urgent care because I thought I’d gotten heat exhaustion just from going to school,” LaComb, who is 17, told SAN.

It didn’t used to be that way. When LaComb was younger, he returned to school later in August. A decade ago, his district, Orange County Public Schools, started the year on Aug. 24. This year, school opened on Monday, Aug. 11.

During his research, DeSilver attempted to piece together the reasons behind these regional idiosyncrasies. He couldn’t find a definitive answer.

“The one thing I could find that wasn’t true, it had nothing to do with … the school calendar was set when all the kids worked on the farm,” he said. “That’s bogus. That was never the case, even in the 19th century.”

Why start schools earlier in August?

LaComb wanted to know why the start date had changed in his Florida district. So he asked his principal. Her response, he said: End-of-the-year testing.

Schools that begin in August have a leg up on other districts when it comes to preparing for Advanced Placement tests.

“The AP tests are all on the same day for the entire country,” said Cattani, in New Jersey. “The tests are May 5 through like May 15, no matter if you started school on Aug. 5 or you started school Sept. 5. So that means my students at Lenape are one month behind instructional time for the AP tests, in comparison to schools with earlier start dates.

“My AP teachers, they would love to have that back of that time, that one more month, because what we cram in in nine months is what they’re doing in 10 months,” Cattani told SAN.

But an earlier start date doesn’t always guarantee students will be in their chairs as much as the calendar orders. On hot days, schools often cancel class or dismiss early. In 2022, the Philadelphia school district opened for school on Aug. 29. That evening, district leaders announced plans to dismiss students from 118 schools three hours early each of the following two days due to concerns about extreme heat in buildings “that do not have sufficient cooling systems.”

LaComb wonders why students are called back to class so early if they might be sent home anyway.

“I feel like the best solution would be having us start later rather than earlier,” LaComb told SAN.