Schools as Cleaner Air and Cooling Centers: Tips for Facility Managers, Principals, Teachers, and Parents and Caregivers

Communities across the United States are facing the impacts of climate change, including severe health consequences from disasters like heat waves and wildfires. The factsheets below can help guide important school partners on how to make schools safer during these increasingly frequent and more severe climate change impacts.

On this page:

• Factsheets
• Climate Impacts and Sensitive Populations
• Schools as Community Cleaner Air and Cooling Centers 2021 Pilot Program
• More Resources

Factsheets

Upgrades to school facilities, especially to HVAC systems, can help mitigate the sometimes overlapping impacts from extreme heat, wildfire smoke, and the transmission of infectious diseases such as COVID-19. Specific approaches may differ depending on many factors, such as the age of the building and the HVAC system, classroom use, student population, and the severity of the disaster such as high temperature, elevated Air Quality Index, and number of infectious disease cases. There’s no single set of guidance that can simultaneously address all three risks, but these tips can help school partners better understand best practices for keeping kids safe during these three types of disasters.

Public health agencies will be essential partners for coordination on policies, public messaging, and decisions around closing or opening school facilities for use as community cleaner air or cooling centers. 

• Schools as Cleaner Air and Cooling Centers for Facilities Managers (pdf) (1.56 MB)
  • In Spanish:  Las escuelas como centros de refrigeración y aire más limpio para administradores de instalaciones (pdf) (3.83 MB)
• Schools as Cleaner Air and Cooling Centers for Principals and School Administrators (pdf) (1.46 MB)
  • In Spanish: Las escuelas como centros de refrigeración y aire más limpio para directivos y administradores de escuelas (pdf) (5.89 MB)
• Schools as Cleaner Air and Cooling Centers for Teachers (pdf) (1.32 MB)
  • In Spanish:  Las escuelas como centros de refrigeración y aire más limpio para docentes (pdf) (5.83 MB)
• Schools as Cleaner Air and Cooling Centers for Parents and Caregivers (pdf) (908.37 KB)
  • In Spanish:  Las escuelas como centros de refrigeración y aire más limpio para padres y cuidadores (pdf) (1.22 MB)

Climate Impacts and Sensitive Populations

Extreme heat and wildfire smoke disproportionately affect people who have existing health issues, such as cardiovascular disease, or who already experience poor air quality because they live, work, or go to school near industry or highways. Children are uniquely vulnerable to extreme heat and wildfire smoke, because of their size, physiology, and factors that include playing outdoors and having less control over their environment and exposure to harm. In addition, studies suggest that air pollutant exposure worsens COVID-19 symptoms and outcomes.

• Learn more about climate change and human health.