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While Quebec Education Bernard Drainville spoke this week of holding year-end exams in the mornings to spare students the worst of this week’s heat wave in the province, a check of local school boards in Montreal on Tuesday found that authorities have long had protocols in place for buildings where air conditioning is either rare or non-existent.
English Montreal School Board spokesperson Mike Cohen said that none of its schools are equipped with air conditioning (although some may possess window units), and that episodes of extreme heat are met with common sense measures that include ensuring staff and students are regularly hydrated, fans are deployed in classrooms and other areas, and the dress code is relaxed to allow lighter clothing to be worn.
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At the Lester B. Pearson School Board, spokesperson Darren Becker noted that in buildings with mechanical ventilation systems, “the practice is to open doors and windows in the early morning so that the cooler air can circulate to start the day. … The majority of classrooms have ceiling or floor fans.”
Like the EMSB, the Lester B. Pearson School Board also urged parents to make sure their children had a water bottle, light clothing and a hat to deal with the heat and to inform their school if they intend to keep their child at home because of extreme weather.
The Centre Service Scolaire de Montréal (CSSM), meanwhile, said in an email to The Gazette that 166 of its 187 schools are fully (72) or partially (94) equipped with ventilation systems and that proper air flow, be it naturally or mechanically occurring, “can often diminish the effects of extreme heat.”
The CSSM added that when necessary, classes are moved outside to mitigate the effects of the heat and that trees and other vegetation had been added to school yards to provide shelter and areas of cool air.
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