During the recent Bay Area heat wave, Dover Elementary teacher Chris MacLean said his classroom was so hot one day that a student got a bloody nose and another felt so nauseous they went home.
MacLean told Richmondside such situations are common when heat gets trapped inside old buildings that don’t have air conditioning.
“It’s always the worst in the fall, but it’s been changing as the world gets hotter and there’s more extreme weather events,” MacLean said. “If we wait until it gets too severe — that’s too late. I think right now we should try to address this because it’s not healthy for people, and it’s way less conducive for learning and just the kids’ well-being right now.”
He said while there aren’t many extremely hot days in Richmond, when they happen it can be debilitating. Students have a hard time concentrating, and staff members struggle to make it through the day.
According to news reports and the National Weather Service Bay Area, heat advisories for shoreline communities have become more frequent — including notable events in March 2026, July 2026, September 2026, and multiple occurrences in 2023 and 2024. An advisory was issued in Richmond Thursday, and temperatures are expected to reach 78 on Tuesday, then cool down for about a week, before rising the week of Sept. 21.
“A lot of my coworkers, the teachers, have also been complaining about headaches,” MacLean said. “It was already 80 degrees in my colleague’s classroom at 7 in the morning.”
He said two years ago, his sixth-grade students had to move around campus to try to find a room with an air conditioner or some shade to escape the heat inside.
“We went to the library. The library was taken. We went to the band room. The band room was taken,” he said. “So we ended up doing our writing class in the cafeteria on the stage because that was the coolest place we could find.”
He isn’t the only teacher to raise this concern. At Wednesday’s school board meeting, Murphy Elementary third-grade teacher Karen VanWinkle said her classroom was 81 degrees on Wednesday. In addition, the CO2 monitor in the art room read red, meaning there were high levels of carbon dioxide, even with all the doors and windows open. This could be because of high occupancy (meaning more people are exhaling faster than can ventilated out of the room), poor outdoor air quality or circulation, carbon dioxide trapped near the censor or the device needs to be recalibrated or troubleshooted, according to various monitor manufacturers.
“Our art teacher got a headache within an hour of being in the room,” VanWinkle said. “Last year we reported this to maintenance and (they said) open all the doors and windows. We are doing that and there is no change happening.”
She said in addition to high CO2 levels, high temperatures are also dangerous because students as young as 6 are in that room and could be more vulnerable to ill health effects.
Hotter temperatures can impact student health, learning outcomes
Children are more sensitive to the effects of heat than adults because they have higher core body temperatures, are more physically active and have not fully developed their thermoregulatory systems, which can make it harder for them to acclimate to extreme temperatures, among other reasons.
This could ultimately increase a child’s risk of experiencing heat stress, according to a 2018 study from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Heat in classrooms can also create or worsen existing health problems, particularly for students with asthma — a common problem in Richmond, which is known for having higher asthma rates. During extreme weather, asthma-related emergency room visits and hospital admissions tend to increase, according to a study published by the National Library of Medicine.
Hotter temperatures also impact learning outcomes. A 2020 study published in the American Economic Association’s American Economic Journal found that student test scores declined on hotter days, especially in schools with no air conditioning. PSAT scores dropped when hot days accumulated throughout the school year.
A global study published by PLOS Climate (which looked at data from 14 million elementary, middle and high school students across 61 countries) found that student performance improved as temperatures at 68 degrees compared to 86 degrees. The study also found that temperatures between 80 and 90 degrees could cause heat stress in students and a decline in cognitive performance.
Students from lower-income families can also be more vulnerable to the effects of heat because they may also not have air conditioning at home.
“Our OSHA standard doesn’t go above 76 degrees,” VanWinkle told school board members. “We are going to start keeping a tally of how many days our classroom goes above 76.”
Teachers union identifies 24 schools that are a high-priority for infrastructure upgrades
The Richmond teachers union has been sounding the alarm for years about the need to address excessive classroom heat districtwide. In fact, hot classrooms are what inspired current union president Francisco Ortiz to get involved in union work.
“We have been talking about this since at least 2014 because my students were getting nose bleeds,” Ortiz told Richmondside. “This has been a recurring issue.” (According to the Mayo Clinic dry hot air can be among the causes of such bleeds.)
This year, as part of its most recent contract, the union and district agreed that the district must come up with a plan on how to resolve temperature issues by June 30, 2027, with the union identifying the sites most in need of modifications. Ortiz hopes the district can move faster than that, especially since the union has already made progress.
In May, the union surveyed teachers about the heat. About 63% of the 126 teachers surveyed responded “barely” when asked “How prepared is your school site for an extreme hot weather event?” About 27% of respondents said “adequate” and 10% said they were “well-equipped.”
The survey identified 24 schools most in need of infrastructure updates to maintain inside temperatures between 68 and 76 degrees.
About 63% of 126 teachers surveyed responded “barely” when asked “How prepared is your school site for an extreme hot weather event?”
WCCUSD hot weather preparedness survey
“If we’ve done everything that the contract says that we are agreeing to do, then let’s get ahead of it,” Ortiz said. “Let this be a win for the district.”
WCCUSD spokesperson Liz Sanders told Richmondside Thursday night that “Providing healthy, safe learning environments” is a top priority for the district and they already “providing fans and portable AC units, installation of window tinting and window shades at multiple sites, and designation of cooling locations in common spaces on campus.”
“As longer-term strategies, the District has also included an evaluation of our HVAC needs as part of our Facilities Master Plan,” Sanders wrote in an email. “And we are continuing to plant trees at multiple school campuses for long-term shade solutions.”
Ford Elementary report identifies HVAC maintenance problems
Over the summer, the union commissioned a report to examine why Ford Elementary classrooms were getting so hot and what could be done.
The report by Intrinsic Environment, Health & Safety found that MERV 13 filters were 15 months overdue to be changed. Dirty filters can restrict airflow and back up HVAC systems.
This means that a classroom can feel even hotter inside than it is outside or what the thermostat reads inside. Classrooms can also feel hotter because there are about 30 people in the room.
“So it’s like 84 degrees inside the classroom, but the heat index is like 87 when you factor in the humidity and all that stuff,” Ortiz said.
He said on Thursday one of his former Ford colleagues sent him a picture of their classroom being close to 80 degrees at 8:15 a.m. “when their students weren’t even in the classroom and when it was 10 degrees cooler outside.”
The report also identified different cost-effective strategies to help stabilize school temperatures, such as installing portable ACs or mini-split ACs, which are ductless heating and cooling systems that can cool individual rooms or zones.
“Portable AC units were around $400 a unit, and the mini-splits are less than that,” Ortiz said. “This isn’t going to be a recurring cost. This could be used with one-time funds. And obviously it’s going to (increase) electricity, but it’s not necessarily something that is going to be compounded.”
Parents and teachers buying fans
Several teachers told Richmondside they and their colleagues have bought fans to try to cool down classrooms. Shannon Elementary teacher Jeffrey Bean said parents bought his class some fans this week.
“That was very helpful and very generous,” Bean told Richmondside.
Still on Thursday, the temperature inside his classroom reached 86.6 degrees.
Bean said while infrastructure upgrades may be expensive, the cost is worth it for the health and well-being of students. However, he emphasized that he isn’t blaming current district leadership and is hopeful that things will move in the right direction.
“I mean, these schools were built a long time ago. My school was built in the 1960s. It’s an old school,” said Bean, who is in his 12th year of teaching. “I hope the current district leadership doesn’t think of this as like they’re in the wrong for it. I hope they think about this as an opportunity they can take to really improve schools and make schools better.”
Thank you for bringing more attention to this matter. I know Washington Elementary has many classrooms (most?) that have no a/c and with temps in the 80s and 90s this week, it was horrible for them.