Students in sweltering classrooms under smokey skies are bad for grades | Opinion

Back to school season is in full swing in the Central Valley. For too many, returning to the classroom amid triple digit heatwaves means trying to learn in sweltering buildings with insufficient cooling systems or participating in extracurriculars on hot playgrounds and fields for hours on end.

In Selma, one school couldn’t get through the first day of classes because it was too hot during a power outage — temperatures reached over 100 degrees with no working air conditioning. At the same time, neighboring schools are rescheduling football games to later in the evening due to health concerns related to severe heat.

Without climate resilient infrastructure, our schools cannot operate safely amidst increasingly common extreme weather conditions.

This is a statewide problem. California students are returning to classes during raging wildfires, lengthy heat waves and rolling power shutoffs. According to a new data dashboard, students lost a cumulative 8.8 million learning hours in the 2024-25 school year due to school closures from extreme weather events, with more than one in ten students in the state impacted.

So far this school year, there have already been more than 9,000 lost instructional hours with nearly 800 schools impacted by extreme weather events.

These closures and disruptions cause lasting damage: Research shows that a week of weather-related absences can lead to multiple weeks of learning loss across subjects. But the crisis runs deeper than lost instructional time — fundamentally, it’s about educational equity and equal opportunity. Extreme weather disproportionally impacts students from marginalized communities.

Five percent of the gap in test scores between Black and Hispanic students and their white peers can be attributed to disproportionate exposure to hot classrooms, with a lack of air conditioning being linked to increased absenteeism and disciplinary referrals. In California, nearly 3 million students attend school with less than 5% of tree canopy shade in the student zones, half of whom qualify for free and reduced price meals.

A statewide crisis demands coordinated, statewide solutions. We need leadership who will champion investments in school climate resiliency, like modern HVAC systems, solar energy and battery storage and shaded green schoolyards — particularly in communities like many found in the Central Valley, with disproportionate exposure to extreme heat and air pollution and disproportionate access to bond funding for school facilities.

A key part of the solution is ensuring school districts have the capacity and technical assistance they need to do this work. It’s critical that districts are able to access regional resources, plan for extreme weather events and transition to more resilient infrastructure.

State leaders have the opportunity to take a crucial step towards creating the schools our students deserve by funding a dedicated school climate resiliency program that supports districts throughout the state. The program would employ regional climate resiliency coordinators at county offices of education who can help school districts equitably implement climate adaptation strategies, coordinate emergency response within their counties, maximize outside funding for resilience upgrades and make smart facilities planning decisions that address the impacts of climate change.

All of this will help precious state and local dollars go further as extreme heat and weather events increase in frequency and duration.

The Newsom administration has one last opportunity to make schools’ climate resilience part of his legacy. We know the legislature cares about this issue, having voted almost unanimously for bills to create a master plan for climate resilient schools two years in a row, both of which he vetoed. Last year, the governor declined to allocate the $10 million needed for Climate Resilient Schools Coordinators in the budget.

The 2026 budget and legislative session will be the last chance of his governorship to take meaningful action to protect children and school staff from the impacts of extreme heat, wildfires and severe weather.

Without leadership and action, this problem will only worsen. School districts need support to ensure our buildings and grounds will be safe in the decades to come. And students deserve schools that keep them healthy, that allow them to play and thrive, that minimize educational disruptions and that will remain online for generations to come. Let’s give them that this school year.

Jonathan Klein is the co-founder and CEO of UndauntedK12, a nonprofit organization working to ensure that every student has the opportunity to attend a safe, healthy and resilient school.