As California grapples with how to deal with heat waves exacerbated by climate change, schools in the state may soon have plans for cooling outdoor playgrounds by planting more trees and changing surfaces like asphalt that heats up in the hot sun.
The state Senate passed legislation that would require public and charter schools and districts to strategize on how to introduce more shade on campus, plant gardens and replace surfaces that retain too much heat. alternatives such as grasses and wood chips. They have a deadline of 2027 to start implementing their plans.
“We needed this a long time ago,” said state Sen. Caroline Menjivar, a Democrat representing the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles County. “We’re undoing the decades of delay we’re experiencing now.”
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Only a handful of state senators voted against the bill. It will still need the approval of the state Assembly.
The bill is a starting point that will set schools up for any future, stricter laws that might dictate how they must mitigate the heat, Menjivar said.
It’s one of many ways California can try to combat the extremely dry, hot conditions that have plagued the state in recent years. Last year, a brutal heat wave left the state debating how to avoid blackouts as people cranked up air conditions when temperatures broke records in some cities, including Sacramento’s all-time high of 116 degrees Fahrenheit.
Children are at greater risk than adults of suffering from heat-related illnesses that can cause nausea, muscle aches, fatigue and fainting, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A group of students walk back to their classroom after finishing their afternoon snack at Kingsley Elementary School on Jan. 13, 2015, in Los Angeles. California schools may soon have strategies to cool outdoor areas. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)
Some groups agree with the broader goal of reducing heat in schools but say the bill still misses the mark. Ian Padilla of the California Coalition for Adequate School Housing, which advocates for state bonds to help update school facilities, said implementing the law would cost too much and overlap with some existing standards that set by the state to plant shade trees outside buildings.
The legislation could cost the state “in the low to mid-hundreds of millions of dollars,” or at least $10,000 per school by providing grants for schools to implement their plans, the Senate Appropriations Committee estimated .
Another flaw in the bill is the inclusion of wood chips as a possible alternative to things like rubber, Padilla said. Schools in recent years have moved away from wood chips because they can cause injuries to students when they fall, he said.
Christina Hildebrand, president of A Voice for Choice Advocacy, a health nonprofit sponsoring the bill, said the law is needed to ensure more trees are planted in low-income areas where trees aren’t already abundant. these.
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It’s important that schools “that don’t necessarily have the resources” or “community support to do this, get it,” Hildebrand said.
Courtney Tompkins, who lived in the Southern California city of Laguna Niguel before moving to Massachusetts, said her son, who is autistic and then completely nonverbal, was left sleeping outside for more than an hour on a hot day. at the school in 2016. Tompkins learned about the incident at the end of the school day from a teacher, he said.
She said she filed a negligence complaint with the state over the incident, which resulted in a settlement in which her son was placed at a different school. Tompkins said he could not name the school district because he signed a non-disclosure agreement as part of the settlement.
Othman Ramadan, a teacher at Animo Legacy Charter Middle School, a majority Latino school in Los Angeles, said it got so hot last school year that they had to temporarily prevent students from playing soccer outside .
Ramadan worked at another school with poor air conditioning where students on hot days had to use ice packs to cool themselves after suffering heat exhaustion, he said. Planting more trees around schools can have far-reaching effects, Ramadan said.
“It will make a huge difference in terms of the mental health and physical health of our students,” Ramadan said. “If more than the basic needs are met, some of the things higher up the pyramid can also be achieved.”
