Extreme Heat in Schools and Child Care Settings
Photo by Chloé Fusillier
CPCHE, an affiliation of groups with overlapping missions to improve children’s environmental health in Canada, has inaugurated a call to action with the HELD 2025 Campaign: Extreme Heat in Schools and Child Care Settings
CPCHE Core Partner Organizations include:
Canadian Association of Nurses for the Environment. (CANE)
Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE)
Canadian Child Care Federation (CCCF)
Canadian Environmental Law Association (CELA)
The Centre for Environmental Health Equity (CEHE)
Women’s College Hospital Environmental Health Clinic (EHC)
Learning Disabilities Association of Canada (LDAC)
Ontario Public Health Association (OPHA)
Pollution Probe: Clear Air, Clean Water
South Riverdale Community Health Centre (SRCHC)
The HELD 2025 Campaign is an urgent call to equip learning environments for climate resilience that it is hoped will also act as “a tangible and hopeful opportunity for realizing multiple benefits of climate action, including climate justice, health equity and every child’s right to a healthy environment”.
The Call to Action argues that there is “urgent need for planning, investment and policy change to ensure that all schools, early learning and child care setting in Canada are climate-ready and equipped to protect children from heat-related health risks, and to mitigate adverse impacts on learning associated with elevated temperatures”.
The paper includes a variety of measures, many of which can be quickly and easily implemented to address heat in buildings and indoor settings.
INDOOR
Setting a maximum temperature threshold.
Current and evolving research supports an indoor temperature threshold of 26 degrees Centigrade to prevent heat-related illness and death in residential settings. Children’s higher vulnerability to extreme heat justifies the establishment of 25 degrees Centigrade as a maximum temperature threshold in educational facilities. Ongoing monitoring of the air temperature throughout the building is needed to ensure that the threshold is not exceeded.
Passive and behavioural measures to help maintain safer indoor temperatures.
A number of passive building features and behavioural interventions can help keep indoor spaces cool during extreme heat events. These include:
Using window shading to block direct sunning (e. g. Outdoor sun awnings or reflective film; indoor blinds or curtains)
Opening windows and doors and using fans (e. g. Windows fans) to draw in cooler outdoor air (e. g. During cooler parts of the day, overnight, whenever there is a cool breeze)
Keeping windows and doors closed when indoor temperatures are cooler than outdoor temperature.
Turning off heat-generating devices such as appliances, electronics and lights when not needed.
Mechanical cooling and ventilation
Mechanical cooling and ventilation, such as that provided by well-functioning HVAC systems and heat pumps, are essential for protecting children and staff from extreme heat and other indoor air quality concerns, such as wildfire smoke. Installation and/or retrofitting to ensure mechanical ventilation and cooling is a priority for investment.
Low-energy space-cooling such as heat pumps, in combinations with passive building envelope strategies (e.g. cool envelope material, reflective roofs or walls) and building shading (e.g. trees and vegetation) can help ensure resilient heat protection and have the added benefit of reducing carbon emissions. Compared to conventional air conditioning, heat pumps are more energy efficient and can help reduce strain on electricity grids.
Energy efficiency upgrades and other building improvements
In addition to mechanical cooling and ventilation, other building retrofits such as upgrading the building envelope (e.g. cool envelope material, improved building insulation, energy efficient windows and doors) and structural repairs (e.g. repairing/replacing roofs, better sealing of windows and doors) can improve occupant health and resilience to extreme weather events such as heat waves, flooding and wildfire smoke. Such climate-relevant retrofits can also help avoid the damage and costs associated with extreme weather events, and significantly reduce energy consumption.
OUTDOOR
Natural and constructed seasonal shade
Maximizing shade, through natural vegetation (e.g. tree canopy) and constructed shade (e.g. shade sails) can help keep outdoor learning settings cool during hot weather and extreme heat events, with the added benefit of protecting children from UV radiation. Trees not only provide shade but can cool ambient air through evapotranspiration. Well-designed outdoor shade can shield the building from incoming solar radiation, helping to keep indoor temperatures cooler.
Cooler and natural surfaces
Cool roofs (e.g. green roofs, light-coloured roofs), cool pavements (paving surfaces that are light in colour) and natural surfaces (grass, vegetation) have been shown to reduce outdoor temperatures, and can help to keep the building cool inside, as well. Health Canada advises that playgrounds and other outdoor settings should include cool features such as trees, vegetation, water fountains, shade structures and lighter-coloured surfaces. Splash pads and misting stations can also offer cooling during extreme heat.
The Call to Action recommendations include:
1. Adopt a maximum indoor temperature standard of 26 degrees Centigrade in learning environments and update, as needed, to ensure continued alignment with health-based guidance and emerging research on temperature thresholds in indoor environments from authoritative sources.
2. Leverage education and early child care legislation, occupational health and safety laws, public health standards and other regulatory measures to expeditiously implement the maximum indoor temperature standard, coupled with the required resources, technical support and guidance to support schools and early learning and child care programs in meeting the standard.
3. Invest in building retrofits to support climate resiliency in educational settings. This must include installation/upgrading of energy-efficient cooling systems, with continuous improvement targets - in the form of incremental percentages of regularly occupied spaces equipped with mechanical cooling - towards the achievement of facility-wide cooling in all educational facilities. All new builds should be equipped with energy efficient, low/zero-carbon cooling to ensure heat health protection.
4. Immediately equip all educational settings with the means and guidance to implement passive and behavioural cooling measures, such as window shading (awnings and window coverings) to block incoming solar radiation, keep indoor temperatures low and make buildings more energy efficient. In the case of schools, such measures should be clearly outlined in Hot Weather/Heat Response Plans, with effective communication across the school community, transparent tracking and accountability.
5. Promote and require, where applicable, measures to ensure that outdoor spaces and learning settings are equipped to mitigate the effects of extreme heat and other climate-related concerns (e.g. flooding) by: a) maximizing natural and constructed seasonal shade; b) using natural play surfaces; c) restricting the use of tarmac/pavement and other impervious surfacing options, and opting for lighter coloured heat-reflecting surfaces; d) prohibiting the installation of artificial turf (with limited exceptions).
6. Collect the data required to drive extreme heat mitigation measures in indoor and outdoor educational settings, in order to decrease the risk of heat-related illness and disruptions to children’s learning. Data collection should include tracking of existing infrastructure needs (e. g. Percentage and geographic distribution of educational facilities without adequate cooling), ongoing tracking of indoor and outdoor temperatures, and measurements to capture impact on student learning (e. g. School closures, student absences, test scores and other measures of student learning).
7. Prioritize investment in extreme heat mitigation for learning environments in under-resourced communities to promote health equity, including prioritizing socio-economically marginalized communities for upgrades to, or installation of, mechanical cooling systems. Such efforts must be undertaken with active involvement of community representatives and leadership to ensure that interventions are effective, culturally responsive, and aligned with local needs.
8. Optimize and coordinate investments across all levels of government and relevant ministerial mandates (i. e. Education, climate change, energy retrofits, infrastructure, health) to realize the multiple benefits of health, climate resilient learning settings.
9. Build strong intersectoral collaboration, including routine communications and coordinated decision-making, across all relevant domains including education, public health, infrastructure, land use planning, environment, climate change, and occupational health and safety - to protect children’s health, advance health equity, mitigate and adapt to climate change, and model action for a resilient, equitable and hopeful future for children across Canada.