Edinburgh doesn't have air conditioning...and neither do 10,000+ U.S. schools

In the past week, it became fashionable for everyone to dunk on Europe for not having air conditioning to allow them to stay cool in a heat wave. As a person who recently visited Edinburgh and stayed in a hotel where I had to leave the windows open and attempt to sleep in a hot room while World Cup watchers partied outside, I get it! But you know what else doesn’t have air conditioning? More than 10,000 schools in the United States.

Yes, school is out for the summer, but the new school year starts next month in many states. And many kids and teachers will be suffering, or even get sent home due to high temperatures. Not to mention that summer school sessions are also impacted.

Unfortunately, there are not clear and reliable figures on exactly which schools have AC, and whether their systems will provide adequate cooling under heat wave conditions. The Center for Climate Integrity estimates that more than 13,700 K-12 public schools in the lower 48 states that did not need cooling systems in 1970 have installed or will need to install new HVAC systems, at a total cost of over $40 billion. The threshold the analysis used was whether a school was located in a place that would experience more than 32 days of temperatures above 80°F during the school year.

The problem may be bigger than that, as a GAO study from 2020 found that 41 percent of districts need to update or replace heating, ventilation, and air cooling systems — about 36,000 schools across the country. While ESSER (COVID relief) funds were allowed to be used for HVAC systems and many schools planned to use funds for HVAC, it’s unclear how much of a dent these investments made in the overall problem across the country.

So the next time you’re tempted to scold Europe about their air conditioning, check in with your local school system on how they are managing in hot conditions.