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New York City officials are urging school leaders to keep students indoors as temperatures soar during the final week of class for the nation’s largest school system.
The National Weather Service issued an extreme heat warning, the highest alert level, through Tuesday evening, as temperatures inch toward 100 degrees. High humidity will make the air feel even warmer.
Here are three things you should know about how the first heat wave of the season is affecting the last week of school.
Principals urged to cancel outdoor activities
The Education Department issued a directive to move outdoor activities that were scheduled between 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Monday and Tuesday to indoor spaces. That includes graduations, field days, after-school programs, and sports.
Officials wrote on the social media platform X that those activities should be moved “inside to air-conditioned spaces as much as possible or reschedule for a later date.”
Opportunities to reschedule are limited because the last day of school is Thursday. Temperatures are expected to moderate on Wednesday and Thursday, but forecasters expect potentially severe thunderstorms to roll through.
Officials also encouraged students and staff to drink plenty of water and wear sunscreen when outdoors. Bedford-Stuyvesant mom Darline Victor brought her two children to the Prospect Park Splash Pad on Monday to beat the heat shortly after her youngest child graduated from 3-K, the city’s free preschool program for 3-year-olds. She said the city’s guidance to schools made sense to her.
“As much as I would say ‘put the kids outside,’ I understand that there are many parents who want to make sure their kids are safe and sound and can’t handle the heat,” she said. “We have the whole summer ahead of us.”
Election day may complicate plans
Over 700 schools will serve as polling sites during the mayoral primary on Tuesday, according to the Board of Elections, which could make it difficult for some schools to move certain activities indoors.
If a school’s gym is doubling as a polling site, for instance, it might be impossible to hold athletic events inside. Those conflicts have previously prompted some parents and lawmakers to call for eliminating schools as polling sites for early voting, which extends over several days.
If history is any guide, schools may resort to showing movies, especially as academic instruction is typically light at the end of the year.
“We have the resources to host both polling sites and our students and staff in cooled spaces, and we remain in constant communication with NYC Emergency Management to keep our community safe and cool,” Education Department spokesperson Jenna Lyle wrote in an email.
Many school spaces still lack air conditioning
As officials urge school leaders to move students to air conditioned spaces, that might not always be possible. Nearly 1 in 5 classrooms did not have access to functional air conditioning last school year, according to the Independent Budget Office, even as city officials pledged to bring cool air to all instructional spaces and spent nearly half a billion dollars on its “AC for All” program.
Moving graduations and other large-scale events inside could be challenging on some campuses because auditoriums, gyms, and libraries were not guaranteed to get air conditioning under the AC for All initiative.
At P186X, a District 75 program that exclusively serves students with more complex disabilities, one of the school’s Bronx locations did not have functional air conditioning on Monday, according to Jo Macellaro, the school’s union chapter leader.
Macellaro said the school encouraged parents to pick their children up early, though many could not.
“Everyone was sweaty. Everyone was kind of low-energy” and irritable, Macellaro said. “A lot of our kids are non-verbal — they’re not able to express how they’re feeling.”
An Education Department spokesperson did not confirm whether the air conditioning at the school was working, noting that the city has had staff at the building monitoring the situation “to ensure continuous AC.”
City officials will face additional pressure to find cool spaces for children next school year. Under a state law that takes effect in September, schools may not send children into spaces warmer than 88 degrees.
How is your school dealing with the heat? Are activities being canceled or moved inside? Let us know at ny.tips@chalkbeat.org
Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex atazimmerman@chalkbeat.org.
