Heat rules for California workers would also help keep schoolchildren cool

Sacramento, California. — Proposed rules to protect California workers from extreme heat it would extend to school-aged children, requiring school districts to find ways to keep classrooms cool.

If the rules are approved this month, employers in the nation’s most populous state will have to provide help to workers indoors in sweltering warehouses, steamy kitchens and more. dangerously hot work places. The rules will extend to schools, where teachers, janitors, cafeteria workers and other staff will be able to work without air conditioning — as will their students.

“Our working conditions are our students’ learning conditions,” said Jeffery Freitas, president of the California Federation of Teachers, which represents more than 120,000 teachers and other education employees. “We are seeing an unprecedented change in the environment and we know for sure that when it is very hot children cannot learn.”

A state worker safety board is scheduled to vote on the rules on June 20, and they will likely take effect this summer. The move, which marks Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s latest effort to respond to the growing impacts of climate change and extreme heat, would put California ahead of the federal government and much of the country in setting heat standards.

O standards would require indoor workplaces must be cooled below 87 degrees Fahrenheit when employees are present and below 82 degrees in places where workers wear protective clothing or are exposed to radiant heat, such as furnaces. Schools and other workplaces that do not have air conditioning can use fans, foggers, and other methods to reduce ambient temperatures.

The rules allow for workarounds for businesses, including the state’s roughly 1,000 school districts, if they are unable to sufficiently cool their workplaces. In these cases, employers must provide workers with water, breaks, areas where they can cool down, cooling vests or other means to prevent workers from overheating.

“Heat is a mortal danger no matter what type of work you do,” said Laura Stock, a member of the Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board. “If you have an indoor space that is occupied by workers and the public, or in this case children, you would have the same risks to their health as to workers.”

Historically, heat waves have occurred outside of the school year, but of Climate Change it’s making them longer, more frequent, and more intense. Last year was the hottest ever recorded It is schools in the USA closed sporadically during the spring and summer, unable to keep students cool.

Scientists say this year could be even hotter. School officials in Vicksburg, Mississippi, last month I finished the school year early when the air conditioning units had problems. And California’s first heat wave of the season is arriving while some schools are still in session, with temperatures reaching 105 in the Central Valley.

Several states, including Arizona It is New Mexico, require schools to have working air conditioning, but are not required to operate it. Mississippi requires schools to have air conditioning but it doesn’t say at what temperature. Hawaii schools must have classrooms at an “acceptable temperature for student learning,” without specifying the temperature. And Oregon schools should try to cool classrooms, for example with fans, and provide teachers and other staff with ways to cool down, including water and rest breaks, when the heat index indoors reaches 80 degrees.

When the sun shines on the library at Bridges Academy in Melrose, a public school in East Oakland with little shade and tree cover, Christine Schooley draws the curtains and turns off the computers to cool the room. She stopped using a fan after a girl’s long hair got caught in it.

“My library is the hottest place on campus because I get 120 kids here a day,” Schooley said. “It gets hot in here. So yeah, it makes me grumpy and irritable too.”

A 2021 analysis by the Center for Climate Integrity suggests that nearly 14,000 public schools in the U.S. that didn’t need air conditioning in 1970 now do, because they annually experience 32 days of temperatures exceeding 80 degrees — upgrades that would cost more than US$40 billion. The researchers found that the same comparison produces a cost of US$2.4 billion install air conditioning in 678 California schools.

It’s unclear how many California schools will need to install air conditioners or other cooling equipment to meet the new standards because the state doesn’t track which ones already have them, said V. Kelly Turner, associate director of the Luskin Center for Innovation. at the University of California-Los Angeles.

And a school district in the northern part of the state would not face the same challenges as a district in the desert cities of Needles or Palm Springs, said Naj Alikhan, spokesman for the California Association of School Administrators, which took no position on the proposed rules.

One economic analysis commissioned for the board provided cost estimates for a number of industries — such as warehousing, manufacturing and construction — but lacked an estimate for school districts, which make up one of the largest public infrastructure systems in the state and already faces a severe delay of necessary updates. The state Department of Education has not taken a position on the proposal and a spokesman, Scott Roark, declined to comment on the potential cost to schools.

Projections of a multibillion-dollar cost for state prisons were the reason the Newsom administration refused to approve indoor heating rules this year. Since then, tens of thousands of jail and prison employees — and inmates — have been exempted.

It is also unclear whether the regulation will apply to school buses, many of which do not have air conditioning. The Department of Industrial Relations, which oversees the worker safety board, did not respond to questions from school officials or KFF Health News.

Libia Garcia worries about her 15-year-old son, who spends at least an hour each school day traveling on a hot, stuffy school bus from their home in the rural Central Valley community of Huron to his high school and back. “When my son comes home, he is exhausted; he’s dehydrated,” Garcia said in Spanish. “He doesn’t have the energy to do homework or anything else.”

The California Federation of Teachers is pushing state lawmakers to pass a climate resilient schools bill This would require the state to develop a master plan to upgrade schools’ heating and air conditioning systems. Newsom last year vetoed similar legislationciting the cost.

Campaigns to improve schools in other states have produced mixed results. Legislation in Colorado It is New Hampshire failed this year while the accounts in New Jersey It is new York were pending on June 6. Last month, a New York teachers union brought a portable sauna to the state Capitol to demonstrate how hot it can get inside classrooms, only one room of which has air conditioning, said Melinda Person, president of New Teachers United. of the State of York.

“We have these temperature limits for animal shelters. How come we don’t have this for classrooms?” said Democratic New York Assembly member Chris Eachus, whose bill would require schools to take relief measures when classrooms and buildings reach 82 degrees. “We have to protect the health and safety of children.”

Extreme heat is the No. 1 weather-related killer in the U.S. — deadlier than hurricanes, floods and tornadoes. Heat stress can cause heatstroke, cardiac arrest and kidney failure. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 1,600 heat-related deaths occurred in 2021, which is likely an undercount because health care providers are not required to report them. It’s unclear how many of these deaths are work-related, whether indoors or outdoors.

California has established heating standards for outdoor workers since 2005and rules for closed workplaces have been in development since 2016 – delayed, in part, because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

At the federal level, the Biden administration was slow to release a long-awaited regulation to protect indoor and outdoor workers from heat exposure. Although one official said a project is expected this year, its prospects may depend on November’s presidential elections. If former President Donald Trump wins, rules targeting the companies are unlikely to move forward.

The Biden White House held a school sustainability summit and climate change in April, when top officials encouraged districts to apply an infusion of new federal dollars to update your aging infrastructure. The administration also revealed a 18-page guide for school districts to use federal funds.

“The way we invest in our school buildings and our school facilities makes a difference in the lives of our students,” said Roberto Rodriguez, assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Education, at the summit. “They are on the front lines in terms of feeling these impacts.”

This article was produced by KFF Health Newsa national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism on health issues and is one of the main operational programs of the KFF — the independent source of research, polls and journalism on health policy. KFF Health News is the publisher of California Healthlinean editorially independent service from California Health Care Foundation.