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December 3, 2024 Login
Investigative

Degrees of discomfort: High temperatures in classrooms harm teachers and student learning

By Elsie Yuen, November 8th, 2024

The classroom of Julie Panebianco, Universal Ninth Grade (U9) English teacher, is officially the hottest classroom in Berkeley High School, according to BHS’s temperature sensors. (As of Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024, the website used to display the data collected by the temperature sensors, https://berkeleyusdpublic.iaqdashboard.ca/public-portal.html, is no longer in service.) Located on the third floor of the C Building, the classroom is significantly warmer than the hallway directly outside of the door. On Thursday, Oct. 24, 2024, Panebianco checked the thermometer that a former teacher had installed in the room; it was 75 degrees in the hallway and 85 degrees  in the classroom.

The C Building’s third floor has been notorious for its high temperatures for years. This is because it was constructed over a century ago, without modern insulation techniques, explained Tobi Stein, U9 Physics teacher and area vice president for the Berkeley Federation of Teachers (BFT). According to Stein, the BFT was told by the school that the C, G, and H Buildings are all too old to install permanent air conditioning, and doing so would make the buildings unsafe.

“It’s so hard to think and learn and just exist (with the heat) ... when it’s that hot, it’s just so uncomfortable and miserable,” Panebianco said. Zia Grossman-Vendrillo, a U9 English teacher whose room is also on C-3, explained that the heat made her “cranky” and left her feeling like she’d “been in a sauna for hours.”

According to a study by the University of California Los Angeles, hot learning environments significantly affect students’ learning, from hindering their memory ability to decreasing their test scores. Panebianco described seeing students panting and putting their heads down, seemingly about to pass out. “It’s not safe, not conducive for learning. It’s miserable,” Panebianco said. 

Because of the difficulties of learning in hot environments, Grossman-Vendrillo doesn’t expect much from her students on hot days, as it’s difficult to focus. Both Panebianco and Grossman-Vendrillo explained that the hot temperatures lead to lost instructional time. “I definitely haven’t gotten through my material as quickly this year, because we lost learning,” Panebianco said. Grossman-Vendrillo continued, “It sucks to feel like I have to budget (the heat) into my planning ... like, how many days am I going to lose to heat?”

Currently, the most prevalent temporary solution to the heat issue is moving students to cooler, unoccupied classrooms on extremely hot days, according to Kanissia Davis, U9 English teacher. However, this comes with its own cons, Davis explained. “I think there’s some learning loss happening because we’re in a different classroom and students aren’t able to adapt to routine, and it’s unpredictable,” Davis said. 

Panebianco described a similar situation. “Often you wouldn’t know what (the) material, what the setup would be,” Panebianco said. Additionally, students are often excited by the change, making it hard to focus, she explained. 

Stein also believes that switching classrooms isn’t the solution. “We can share classrooms, but when more (than) half the classrooms are too hot, where do we send people? Do we send people from the classrooms that are 95 degrees to the classrooms that are 85 degrees?” Stein said, “That doesn’t really solve the problem, and I would even hesitate to say that it mitigates it; the legal and learning issues are still there.” Despite this, Stein explained that moving rooms was the only actionable solution that he’s gotten from administration at this time. 

Switching classrooms to escape the heat didn’t work for Davis or her students, so she started a GoFundMe for a portable AC unit. “I think it (cost) around $370, so I asked parents if everybody from Hive Two can donate two dollars, then we can reach our goal and... we won’t have to go to a different classroom,” Davis said. In the end, Davis’s class was able to purchase the AC unit, even surpassing their goal. 

Still, Panebianco said, “I don’t understand why the district couldn’t purchase (portable AC units) for the hottest classrooms ... teachers should not have to crowdsource to cool off their classrooms.”

Making the heat problem more complicated, according to Panebianco, there’s the issue of the temporality of the problem, as it’s mainly the worst in the hot seasons. During heat waves, the urgency of the heat issue is unignorable, and teachers are vocal about it, she explained. But after the seasons change, people become occupied by other things, forgetting about the issue until the next heat wave, then the cycle repeats itself. “That’s what I’ve seen happen for the past seven years here,” she added.

Additionally, there are many other issues that Berkeley Unified School District has to attend to, which draws their attention away from BHS’s heat problem, Panebianco explained. “I don't think (BUSD) doesn’t care, and maybe I’m naive, but I think that there’s so many other competing priorities, in terms of, like, what’s the best way to support kids?” Panebianco said, “I think just being uncomfortable is probably not as important as, like, the literacy emergency.”

However, in July of 2024, California approved the Heat Illness Prevention in Indoor Places of Employment standard. This requires employers to allow workers access to a cooldown area and water if their indoor work environment is at least 82 degrees, Stein explained. 

In October, 2024, over 75 percent of the classrooms in BHS were over 82 degrees, according to Stein. “We should be holding ourselves to a higher standard than (the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standards), especially because we have kids in the classroom (where they) can’t learn,” Stein said, “An 81 degree classroom may be OSHA compliant, but it is not a good learning environment.”

While many BHS classrooms have access to water, there is no cooldown area, Stein continued. “And even if there was one, I can’t get up in the middle of my physics class and go to the cooldown area and come back,” he said.

Though some classes’ temperatures are currently over the limit, BHS may be exempt from the consequences right now as it’s formulating a plan to mitigate the problem, Stein described. It’s possible that BUSD and BHS haven’t had time to deal with OSHA as a legal issue yet, since it was just passed this summer. Davis had a similar opinion. “Berkeley High School (should) be more proactive to solve this problem,” she said, “Knowing the state of my classroom and how it is, I think it’s only a matter of time before somebody passes out."