FERGUS – Lights were off, windows shuttered, and fans hummed in hot classrooms during the last week of school before summer break.
Staff at dozens of Upper Grand District School Board (UGDSB) schools without or with limited air conditioning took measures to keep kids as cool as possible during extreme heat on Monday and Tuesday.
Students were reminded to drink water frequently and given frozen treats to snack on, and their physical activity and outdoor time was limited.
At James McQueen Public School in Fergus, principal Deanne Prins said teachers set up water play activities outside and rotated their classes through hallways and empty rooms, seeking cooler spaces.
“The staff do a really great job of mitigating the heat,” Prins said.
“Obviously in an ideal world, AC would be great, but we also do okay without.”
Staff also kept a close eye out for signs of heat exhaustion, sending students home when needed, Prins noted.
James McQueen is one of 10 UGDSB schools that do not have air conditioning anywhere in the building (the others in Wellington County are Kenilworth Public School and Ross R. MacKay PS in Hillsburgh).
Another 15 schools have limited cooled areas, board officials told the Advertiser.
They did not provide details about which schools have limited cooling or which rooms are cooled, but parents said in many cases it’s the library and office.
Felt unwell
On June 23, about 20 of James McQueen’s 245 students left school early, some because they felt unwell and some because parents picked them up to get them out of the heat, Prins said.
Another 35 students stayed away all day.
Attendance was higher on June 24, the second day of heat warnings, Prins noted, adding no staff had to leave either day due to the heat.
Tara DeJonge kept her daughter home from James McQueen on Monday due to high temperatures.
She planned to pick her up halfway through the day on Tuesday, but her daughter opted to “stick it out” at school.
“By afternoon pick-up she was covered in sweat and flushed,” DeJonge said.
James McQueen parent Lindsay Duncan said she kept her sons home on Monday and Tuesday.
She said she doesn’t regret it, but “it does make me sad that they had to miss out on two days of end of school festivities.”
Duncan added school staff members “are truly the best and do everything in their power to keep the kids safe and healthy.
“Unfortunately they’ve been dealt a pretty unfair hand when it comes to having a safe and healthy place to teach children.”
She called it “simply inhumane at these temperatures to have teachers and children subjected to no relief,” and pondered possible solutions such as installing window air conditioning units.
Megan Hamilton, who has a son in Grade 1 at James McQueen, said while air conditioning would be ideal, “my son has still been able to thrive at school, given the situation” and he hasn’t mentioned the heat unless asked directly.
“The teachers and staff have done the best they can with the resources they have,” she said.
‘Significant planning’
Hamilton’s son will be attending summer camp at the school, and while she is concerned about the heat, she believes “children are resilient, and often as adults we are more uncomfortable than they are as children.”
She also noted retrofitting schools with air conditioning “could come at a heavy cost to the school board,” given the number of schools without it.
UGDSB communications lead Heather Loney seemed to agree, noting, “The infrastructure of older schools was not built to support air conditioning.
“In order to implement air conditioning fully at each school it requires significant planning both structurally and financially.”
Loney said, “Typically, schools built after the year 2000 have most of their rooms air conditioned.”
She explained that of the board’s 76 schools, 36 “have cooling capabilities throughout the entire school and 15 schools have about 80% of the site with cooling capabilities,” such as air conditioning or heat pump technology that brings cooler air into the building from below ground level.
Loney added the UGDSB relies on “funding provided by the Ministry of Education in order to do school renovations and upgrades,” and when HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) systems need to be replaced, they are converted to heat pumps, “which will allow for better opportunities to cool spaces,” she added.
All schools in the Wellington Catholic District School Board have air conditioning throughout the building, officials there told the Advertiser.
