Too Hot for School

"If I have to do another year of this I don't think I'll make it," she said.

When first graders can't get cool they get grumpy and fidgety, Melendez said. And although her young students have trouble verbalizing why they're uncomfortable, Melendez knows they won't be able to focus on hot days.

"They're not paying attention to me. And not being able to control how cool my room is, it just takes longer to get through the lesson," she said.

This could be because, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis, black and Hispanic students have higher poverty rates. Another study from the Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health found that many schools in low-income areas are at greater risk when it comes to the effects of heat as a result of climate change.

This worries teachers like Melendez, who said one hot day can throw her whole week's lesson plan out the window. And according reports like the Fourth National Climate Assessment, which the U.S. Global Change Research Program released in late November 2018, hotter temperatures as a result of climate change are unlikely to decrease anytime soon.

For each degree increase in temperature, test scores decrease by about one percent. For back and Hispanic students, it's three times more. Slide the thermometer to see the impact of increasing temperature on test scores overall, and for minority students.

Tracii McGregor, mom of 8-year-old Tristan who was in Melendez's first grade class, said one summer she was trying to do some homeschooling with her son. But it quickly turned into what McGregor called a "stand-off."

"He just refused to do the work, and that's not Tristan," she said. "And I was so perplexed. I was like 'who is this kid?' And as I think about it now...he might have been too hot."

McGregor said she didn't put the two together at the time, and according to Heather Randall, an environmental sociologist who studies the relationship between climate change and education, McGregor's initial inability to connect the two is not uncommon.

"It's not always an obvious link," Randall said. "So, it's really important to get that out there that your kids are pretty vulnerable and as climate change continues to manifest it's only going to get worse."

Melendez is feeling that vulnerability in her classroom.

One day the temperature reached the 95-degree threshold to keep the students inside for recess, she said.

"It was atrocious," she said. "I had to open the classroom doors to the hallway, we got just the tiniest bit of a breeze. But it was just torture having to be in here...I didn't even bother opening the windows because it was just heat hitting us in the face."

Melendez was trying to do a writing lesson, but she quickly realized that her first graders weren't going to be able to focus on anything she was trying to teach them. Instead, she turned off all the lights and gave them a piece of paper to just draw at their tables.

"It kind of gave them a little bit of space, not on the carpet all together all huddled up," she said.

But if this happens repeatedly, Melendez said she can get weeks behind her own lesson plan as well as those of other teachers in the school who have air conditioning. Since the school has a specific schedule for testing, this could turn into a problem.

"If I haven't taught them everything and they take the test, then they're just not going to know what to do," she said.

Melendez said the air conditioning in her room was fixed at one point for a few weeks, but her school is located in an old building. According to Robert Laughton, the director of maintenance and operations for the Los Angeles Unified School District, AC units tend to last about 20 years. He said they try to stay ahead of the ones that need replacing, but Melendez's classroom is an example of how challenging that is.

As a district with over a thousand schools, the maintenance department can get from hundreds to thousands of requests a day, according to Laughton.

He said the district staffs for its "basic work load" and then calls in some outside contractors to help in the peak seasons with spikes in requests.

Especially during what Laughton calls "peak" seasons, like when kids start coming back to school in the fall.

He said the district staffs for its "basic work load" and then calls in some outside contractors to help in the peak seasons with spikes in requests.

But there are other spikes as well. Schools in more vulnerable communities have more maintenance requests according to data from LAUSD and CalEnviroScreen, a dataset aimed at identifying communities that are more burdened by climate change.

This could be because these areas are more densely populated, contributing to more wear and tear on the buildings, according to Laughton. The more people that walk in and out of classrooms, for example, the more damaged the door to that classroom will become.

Marisela Del Real is a school psychologist at 107th Street Elementary, which has one of the highest rates of free and reduced lunch for kids due to their socioeconomic status. She said the heat is even more of a challenge for both students and families who have lower incomes.

Even if they have it at school, some students may not have air conditioning at home, she said. They may also live with other families, and with so many people living in one place, it can make it harder for students relax, cool off and focus on homework.

"If they're upset from not being able to do homework or not being able to play soccer or some fun activity," she said. "That'll affect how they come into school the next day."

And many have to walk to and from school, she said, which exposes them to the heat as well.

Poorer communities also tend to have higher rates of asthma, according to CalEnviroScreen data. And according to the American Lung Association, asthma is one of the leading causes of kids missing school.

Randall said a longer pollen season between winters can cause increased asthma and allergy symptoms. More CO2 in the air makes plants produce more pollen as well.

But there's also "ground-level ozone," said Randall, which is different than the atmospheric ozone layer on the earth. Ground-level ozone is a chemical reaction between pollutants and sunlight. She said it can close off airways and can exacerbate asthma, something that the National Climate Assessment warns against as well. Heat, said Randall, speeds up production of ground-level ozone, and long-term exposure can also restrict lung development in kids.

Most parents of students who have asthma communicate with teachers about their child's condition, according to both Del Real and Melendez. But younger children often aren't as good at communicating when they need their inhaler, and it's hard for teachers to recognize the symptoms as well.

"It isn't until the other kids start noticing something different, then they're like 'hey he's acting funny,'" Del Real said.

Then when a student is sent to the nurse's office he or she may spend 30 minutes to an hour there, according to Del Real. When the student comes back to the classroom, he or she has missed instruction, causing disruption to not only their own learning routine but the routine of those around them.

Del Real also said she's noticed kids with epilepsy to be adversely affected by the heat. It raises kids' body temperatures and affects the brain.

"Extra precautions are taken with those types of students because they can be very irritable to the sun on a normal day that isn't that hot," she said, adding that some students even have an umbrella to take outside with them to keep them cool.

But heat affects more than just internal health. McGregor's son Tristan has eczema. She said even though she's preventative and communicates to Tristan's teachers about his condition, it's still difficult to "keep it at bay."

"I leave things in the office, like little ointments...in case he has a break out," she said. But, as a 8-year-old boy, "he's not thinking to go to the office," she said.

McGregor, who also developed eczema this year, described the itching caused by the condition as "incessant."

But itching caused by common things like mosquito bites can also be exacerbated by heat, making it harder for kids to focus. Melendez said she has seen an abnormally large amount of mosquito bites on her students this year.

"When you have a classroom that's already warm and then kids are scratching it just gets worse," Melendez said.

The world is only going to see more and more hot days, according to Randall, along with hundreds of other experts who worked on the Climate Change Assessment. But education is an important pathway to making people more resilient to climate change. The factors that make people vulnerable to climate change are things like poverty, living situations and resources, Randall said.

"Education is really key to helping make people less vulnerable and helping to expand upward mobility," Randall said.

But it's cyclical in nature, she said. Education may be a way out of poverty, but if students coming from lower income households have a more stunted education because of their vulnerability to climate change, they will not have that chance.

Teachers like Melendez will continue to do their best to teach the next generation, despite the struggle with the heat. Melendez said she does what she can in her classroom to teach her students about climate change and to reduce their "carbon footprint."

"Not just for us, but for the good of everyone," she said.