Weather in San Francisco: Many schools do not have air conditioning

SAN FRANCISCO – If you live or work in San Francisco, you know that air conditioning is rare.

Many schools in California are unprepared for this type of heat.

If schools have air conditioning, they are often old and outdated. Hot classrooms lead to more students and teachers diseases and absences, and studies show that they affect children's ability to learn.

According to the Associated Press, all or most schools in Long Beach lack air conditioning, affecting 14,000 students.

In Oakland, up to 2,000 classrooms in 77 schools are not equipped with them. Equipping those schools with air conditioning would be an expensive and complicated task, costing at least $400 million, said Preston Thomas, chief systems and services officer for the Oakland Unified School District.

On a recent day in Oakland, when temperatures outside reached 30 degrees, eighth-grader Juliette Sanchez felt stuffy and hot in a stuffy room at Melrose Leadership Academy.

“It's a lot harder for me to concentrate on what I'm doing,” Sanchez told the Associated Press. “At the moment I’m staying at the table. It's uncomfortable to write. My arm is sticky and I’m just hot.”

In Fresno, officials have been overwhelmed with more than 5,000 calls for air conditioning repairs in the past 12 months.

“When it's too hot, just like when you're too hungry, it's almost impossible to learn, so the impact on students and teachers is great,” said Paul Idsvoog, chief operations officer for the Fresno Unified School District. “If you have several systems that are 20 years old, sooner or later you will no longer be able to keep up with developments.”

A joint report from UC Berkeley and Stanford last year found that between 15% and 20% of K-12 public schools have no air conditioning at all. And up to 10% need major repairs or replacement to keep their systems functioning properly.

Advocates say this is likely an underestimate.

For many schools, using fans and open windows is the best option.

School officials say they would need tens of billions of dollars to install and repair air conditioning. Many of the worst problems exist in hot, inland school districts that serve low-income communities of color, where there are fewer financial resources to replace or repair them.

Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed it last month a bill that would have created a master plan for climate resilient schools, including an assessment of when air conditioning systems were last upgraded. State officials do not currently collect data on air conditioning in schools.

National, 41% of school districts At least half of their schools need to have their heating, air conditioning and ventilation systems upgraded or replaced, according to a federal study.

Several Bay Area schools have canceled activities to keep children out of the heat. In San Francisco, extracurricular sports, including middle school games and some high school practices, were canceled Tuesday.

They are expected to resume on Wednesday.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.