No school . . . no AC

[Fox Mike]

I was listening to the news tonight and heard about all the schools closing due to the heat and no air conditioning. I thought back and realized that until I was in high school there was no air conditioning in any school I attended. I do remember that we had fans, that ROARED, but no A/C. Why today must the school have A/C or they close.

 

[Tom W]

Because the kids will complain to momma and momma will complain to the principal.....I hear of it all the time.....

 

[Uncle Howie]

OR... maybe there are no windows that open?

My high school was a 1970ish addition to a building from the late 1800s or early 1900s. The “old” high school is now the junior high.

The new school was going to be a marvel of climate control... comfortable year-round, As such, there were no windows that opened. The problem was that they ran out of money about the time the AC should have been purchased...

I live in MN, which is cooler than where many of you live, but we still get some hot and humid weather. Put a sealed brick building in the hot sunshine, with class sizes routinely approaching 40 kids... and you have a recipe for dangerously high temps.

The junior high, meanwhile... remained relatively comfortable. It was shaded from the south by the new high school, had some remaining shade trees around it, and had the windows open to catch the breeze.

Progress... :mrgreen:

 

[eveled]

Same thing happened in my home town. The newer school buildings were designed for ac, but no ac. The newer schools were very hot even on warm days. The 100 year old schools were always cool.

 

[Mobuck]

About the time I started school they built a new grade school "wing". One story, flat roof, oriented N-S with guess what(?) a black paved playground on the west side. When the Indian summer sun hit that black surface, it reflected the hot air directly into the rooms on the west 1/2 of the building. Students sitting on the outer two rows of seats got literally toasted. In a misguided chivalrous "be nice to the girls" plan, the teachers moved all the farm boys who had spent all summer in the sun anyway to those seats so the little doilies didn't get scorched.

 

[gramps]

WIMPS!
gramps

 

[kramden]

Back in the 50's and 60's my schools had no A/C ever. Our barracks in the Army had no A/C. How did we ever survive?

 

[pisgah]

Raised in the steamy south, I never attended an air conditioned school until I reached college. And most of those schools were of an age -- late 1890's -- that they really didn't have much in the way of heat, either -- old radiator systems fed by coal or oil-fired boilers that more often than not were on the blink. Never missed a day due to cold or heat.

 

[Fox Mike]

Back in the 50's and 60's my schools had no A/C ever. Our barracks in the Army had no A/C. How did we ever survive?

When I was going through basic at Ft Knox in February of 1960 they had just started building the "Pink Palaces". They were brick barracks that had steam heat and A/C. I was over in D-10-4 old wooden two story. Coal fired furnace for heat and a BIG fan for cool.

 

[bogus bill]

I went to a one room grammar school just like little house on the prairie with just a pot bellied stove in the 1940`s. It didnt hurt us.

 

[coach]

Geez guys, this isn’t the 40’s or 50’s when hardly anybody had a/c. It’s the 21st century where a/c is the norm. Can kids learn when when the heat gets into the 90s with high humidity? I don’t think so. How many of you are sitting in a/c right now waiting for fall weather to arrive. My kids went to a high school without a/c and it could be miserable.
BTW - I guarantee all the administrative buildings are air conditioned. I wonder where they found the money for that.

 

[gasbag]

Just give the kids a free Unicorn and tell them to be quiet.
Problem solved.
You're welcome.

 

[bogus bill]

We don't have AC even now. Do have a water cooler. We live at 6,000 feet in Utah. Go forty miles to St. George at 2,500 feet and its hell. Always 20 degrees hotter. Usually is 110/115 degrees or more in summer down there. The wife is hot blooded and suffers. I used to take warfarin (Xarelto now) and it keeps me cooler as it thins the blood. I worked 35 years on the desert but did 32 of them on graveyard to escape the heat. I did have AC back then for about 25 of them. High humidity along with the heat is the killer for me. I couldn't/wouldn't live in the south in summertime. Fact is when we didn't know any better we sort of got used to it.

 

[ChiefMuzz]

Its precaution and its smart. More than anything its liability. Kids can miss a couple half days of school and survive. Heck. I held my 6 year old home from soccer practice last night because it was near 100 with the humidity and I wasn't letting an uneducated youth coach run him around on a field for an hour because she thought bringing wet towels in a cooler would suffice. I had heat stroke as a kid and I have no desire to expose my children to that. I think the adage is work smart, not hard. One day of school or one practice has no effect in 10 years. Be smart...

 

[caryc]

Try being in the old Navy in a ships boiler room or engine room or evaporator room for eight hours a day. I had a constant case of heat rash. I hear it's all different on the newer ships now.

 

[Merle1948]

I was listening to the news tonight and heard about all the schools closing due to the heat and no air conditioning. I thought back and realized that until I was in high school there was no air conditioning in any school I attended. I do remember that we had fans, that ROARED, but no A/C. Why today must the school have A/C or they close.

snowflakes!!! :mrgreen: