Group sitting in school playground

A Call for Heat Preparedness at California Schools

A California Healthline article on how to help schools become more heat-resilient in the face of global warming cited recommendations laid out in a policy brief from the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, including setting an indoor temperature limit and investing in shade and greenery for play areas. Two of the policy brief’s co-authors, Associate Professor of Urban Planning V. Kelly Turner and graduate student Lauren Dunlap, are currently modeling how increasing the tree canopy to 30% can affect heat stress and researching the different benefits of dispersed or clustered tree configurations. “Obviously, the California Education Board wasn’t set up to think about climate change. But now that climate change is a reality, virtually every sector is going to have to think about it,” Turner said. The article, which appeared in the Sacramento Bee, LAist and other outlets, noted that legislative action includes a bill by State Sen. Caroline Menjivar MSW ’18 that would require schools to have heat plans by 2027.


 

0 replies

Leave a Reply

Want to join the discussion?
Feel free to contribute!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *