School Facilities & Climate Resilience
How schools are challenged by the changing climate and how they are adapting.
Science is clear that Earth’s atmosphere is warming and its climate is changing. In all regions, through all seasons, weather patterns are intensifying. Heat waves are becoming more frequent and extreme, storms more powerful, wildfires more overwhelming. In this context, “resilience” has emerged as a term of art. In ecology, resilience refers to the ability of a system or an organism to adapt to disturbances while sustaining its basic structures and functionality.
Take-Aways
- For schools, resilience means designing – or, most often, adapting – facilities to maintain a healthful environment for students and staff, even when surrounding conditions get extreme. It means developing infrastructure that allows schools to operate reliably when weather events disrupt larger systems, including the energy grid. In times of crisis, a resilient school facility can be a source of shelter, power, and essential support for the surrounding community.
- Heat exposure is an increasingly urgent issue affecting schools in all regions of the country. Air conditioning is becoming a necessary adaptation for schools in moderate climate zones that were not designed for it. Schools in hotter and more fire-prone regions need to modernize their systems to cope with extended heat waves and improve ventilation and filtration. Schoolyards also require modernization to provide shade and deflect heat from surfaces where students are present.
- School facilities can contribute significantly toward mitigating climate impacts by improving their energy efficiency and reducing their emission of warming gasses. As the second-largest component of public infrastructure in the U.S., schools are major energy consumers and their operations produce millions of metric tons of carbon pollution each year.
- Climate change acts as a force-multiplier to worsen underlying inequities in health and education outcomes. For example, students in low-wealth communities and communities of color are both more likely to be exposed to extreme heat and airborne pollutants and less likely to attend schools that provide shade and are equipped with modern HVAC systems.
Summaries
Climate Change and Schools: Environmental Hazards and Resiliency
Describes and illustrates patterns of risk and vulnerability to climate-based hazards for schools in different regions of the U.S. and its territories. Develops a framework for resilience-building that includes both proactive initiatives to strengthen the social determinants of health at a community level, and forward-looking approaches to response and recovery from destructive weather events.
Climate Resilient California Schools
Assembles findings from national and international research, as well as state-level data, to survey the impacts of climate change on children’s physical health, mental health, and access to educational opportunity. Evaluates the readiness of California’s 11,000 public schools to protect and support students through these challenges, and lays out a framework to increase climate resilience and sustainability. Though California is foregrounded, the report’s findings apply broadly.
Invest in Resilient Public School Infrastructure
Briefly summarizes how climate-driven natural disasters – including super-powered hurricanes and tornadoes, floods, and wildfires – are impacting schools, and recommends policy moves and investments to fortify school infrastructure and aid their preparation for these events.
K12 Climate Action Plan
Establishes a four-part framework to inform a systemic response to climate change across the education sector, comprising strategies to (1) mitigate school-based emissions, (2) adapt school facilities and operations to safeguard students, (3) educate students about the causes and effects of climate change, and about emerging solutions, and (4) advance equity by centering the most vulnerable communities and involving stakeholders in planning. Recommends actions at the local, state, and federal levels.
Commentaries
Redesigning School Buildings to Stand Up to Climate Change
Describes how architects are learning to incorporate resilience features in their designs for school buildings.
The Missed Opportunity for Public Schools and Climate Change
Spotlights the strategic importance of including schools in municipal climate action plans.
What Schools Can Do to Tackle Climate Change (Hint: More Than You Think)
Highlights ways schools can start small, learn from innovators, and build resilience over time. Includes links to help sites and related resources.
Deep Dives
Contending With Heat
Extreme Heat Is Making Schools Hotter — And Learning Harder
Describes how rising heat is drawing attention from national education and policy organizations, and how states are beginning to respond.
Heat and Learning
Harnesses data on 10 million 10th-graders who took the PSAT to reveal how cumulative heat exposure inhibits academic development, and how effective school air conditioning can mitigate that effect. Without air conditioning, each degree of increase in average school year temperature reduced the amount students learned that year by one percent.
Heat at School: Nausea, Headaches, Burns, Fatigue.
A perspective on heat, health, and resilience from school nurses.
Learning Is Inhibited By Heat Exposure, Both Internationally And Within The United States
Explores how heat exposure contributes to differences in achievement both between countries and within them. Combining standardized test data from 58 countries and 12,000 U.S. school districts with local weather data, finds a global pattern: as the number of hot school days (>80° F) increases, learning outcomes decline. Notes how these outcomes correlate to differences in the socioeconomic status of local students.
Planning and Budgeting for Resilience in New School Construction
Inside a New School Built to Be Climate-Resilient
Describes how a new elementary school in suburban Lake Oswego, Oregon was designed for resilience, with features such as an on-site solar microgrid to ensure continuous power and structural features planned with input from emergency agencies to enable the school to serve as a community shelter. Considerations include both the initial cost of construction and projected long-term cost savings, as well as intended benefits to students and the community.
Tools
Decision Making Guide for School Closure
Checklist helps local decision-makers determine if schools and other district facilities are adequately prepared to stay open during extreme weather or other emergencies. Includes equity considerations and guidance on communications.
Heat-Resilient Schools Resource Kit
Provides fact sheets and infographics to clarify and communicate the hazards of extreme heat and address inequities in heat exposure.
Preparing Schools for Climate Resiliency
Provides a roadmap for integrating climate resiliency into school district planning, with strategies to address wildfire, extreme temperatures, and flooding, to prepare for power instability. Includes: tips for aligning existing district plans with climate resiliency goals; actionable infrastructure strategies for each category of risk; resources for developing and funding climate resilience planning; and case studies.
School Board Climate Action Toolkit
Identifies nine strategies that local school boards can use to work toward greater climate readiness and resilience in their schools. Includes a model school board resolution and suggests methods to communicate about the issues, engage stakeholders in planning, set goals, and assess progress. Provides relevant case studies and links to resources.
The Building Electrification Technology Roadmap for Schools
Presents a detailed framework for local decision-makers considering electric alternatives to fossil fuel-burning legacy building systems and equipment including HVAC systems, water heaters, cooking and laundry equipment, and vehicles. Includes cost analyses to replace common types of equipment in three scenarios: emergency replacements, lifecycle replacements, and planned upgrades or renovations.
Tutorial on Energy & Environmental Management Planning (Video)
Describes the value to local school districts of developing an energy and environmental management plan, both to increase efficiency and cost-effectiveness and to improve safety and health for students and staff.
Federal Resources
To find federal agency resources on this topic, please visit the Federal Support for Facilities page.
