Too hot for summer school?
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Two days before the sweltering July 4 weekend, Martina Meijer, a New York City elementary teacher who occasionally substitutes over the summer, covered a class. The city’s summer school program had just begun and that day temperatures reached 100 degrees.
“Even though the AC was on, it wasn’t working very well,” said Meijer. “There was no programming, no schedule, no plans shared.”
For four hours straight, Meijer and her students remained in the classroom. The stifling heat drained their energy, leaving them lethargic and making it difficult to focus. When she called the main office to ask if she could take them to the gym or outside for recess, school officials told her the weather was too hazardous, she said.
They instructed her to stay in the classroom and give her class of 15 students indoor movement activities — commonly known as “brain breaks” — by following YouTube tutorials.
While many school districts prioritize placing students and staff in schools with air conditioning during summer programming, the blistering temperatures around the country sometimes mean it’s not enough. Problems like malfunctioning air conditioners still persist, and cooling systems have their limits during periods of intense heat like this July’s heat dome.
Climate change is increasingly testing the limits of how summer programs — when students take part in enrichment activities or remediation — can ensure academic needs are met while keeping students safe from the blazing heat.
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As fewer young people choose college, this district wants to ensure they have career options
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At Niagara Falls High School, students are encouraged to consider their careers upon arrival in ninth grade. By 11th grade, every student at the school must pick from one of five pathways, ranging from business and finance to design and engineering. The shift toward career education comes as about one-third of seniors at Niagara Falls High are rejecting college and instead choosing to enter the workforce after graduation, compared with roughly a quarter a decade ago, said Superintendent Mark Laurrie, who retired in June. In a town that’s struggled with population declines, where now-shuttered manufacturing plants once dominated the local labor market, there’s an urgency to prepare high school students for careers.
“It’s important to give them hope for the future with a career pathway — a career, not a job — to have something to aspire to and, hopefully, keep them in the city and in the state,” Laurrie said.
Across the country, a growing number of communities are contending with population declines, driven, in part, by dropping birth rates and tighter restrictions on immigration. More than half of all counties in the U.S. lost population from 2010 to 2020. Enrollment in higher education, too, has sunk nationally, down more than 1.5 million students since 2010 as the cost of tuition has risen and more families question the value of a college degree.
The students graduating from college now are also entering a difficult labor market, spurred by uncertainty around tariffs, inflation and how artificial intelligence might disrupt jobs. In communities where population is trending down, there’s an added pressure for schools to better prepare students to leave high school able to enter the workforce, said Emily Passias, deputy executive director of Advance CTE, a nonprofit that represents state career and technical education leaders.
“There are a lot of communities across the country where the local opportunities for great jobs are evolving,” Passias said. “We see a lot of communities trying to very intentionally look at their labor market conditions,” she added, “and prepare young people for those types of roles.”
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Pace of college closings picks up, with more projected
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Falling enrollment and rising debt have put an estimated 1 in 4 institutions at risk. |
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The island without childcare for babies
Kaua’i spent at least a decade without a single opening for infants or toddlers at childcare centers, causing moms to quit their jobs or leave the island. Now, an effort is underway to change that.
Tracking Trump: His actions on education
The latest: The Department of Education announced an investigation into the Minnesota Department of Education over a complaint from conservative group Defending Education saying the state would use “transgender dolls” in K-12 classrooms this fall. |
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