Last Friday, afternoon classes were canceled in Bacolod City after the Mayor’s office suddenly decided that it was too hot for school children. The intention of protecting kids from the negative effects of intense heat was good, but the execution was awful, considering that these days, anyone with a smartphone has access to fairly accurate weather predictions.
Parents had to arrange how to get their kids back home, under the hot noontime conditions that would’ve been better spent under the shade of a classroom, but after all was said and done, everyone got home safely after dealing with the inconvenience of the surprise announcement.
Upon knowing that school had been canceled, I started to wonder how many more cancellations are going to follow, since the summer heat had just started and we were going to have a few more months of possibly even more intense heat as the dry season ramps up further. After all, if you come to think of it, the temperature on that Friday didn’t even feel that intense yet, but classes were already canceled. Are our government officials going to cancel classes from March until June, and maybe have a few surprise announcements of classes resuming when some rain clouds are spotted on the horizon?
Anyway, come Sunday night, my suspicions are confirmed when another announcement comes out, suspending classes for a few cities for March 11 and 12 (Monday and Tuesday), because of the heat alert.
At least this time, the announcement was done in advance, when the kids were still at home and parents wouldn’t be inconvenienced with having to change schedules just to pick them up post-announcement.
However, it seems like school cancellations at the discretion of local officials who are expected to cite the dangers of the heat are going to become a thing over the next few months. If we had the rainfall-related school cancellations even when there are no typhoon storm signals that have become a thing during the wet season, based on the first few weeks of March, we should expect a new spate of school cancellations during the dry season.
As someone who often takes a walk in the midday heat to run errands during the lunch break, the heat over the past few days doesn’t even feel that intense yet. I can only imagine how many more classes will be canceled when the heat is truly on. I guess that explains why the Philippine academic calendar didn’t match the international one, as classes during the summer time, even before the time of global warming and climate change, simply wasn’t a good idea.
At this point, if school kids are going to finish the school year on time, local officials will have to deal with the heat. The easiest solution would be adjusting their tolerances for the definition of “extreme heat index” so that less classes are canceled, saving the announcement for when the heat has reached truly dangerous levels. Maybe they can do this by consulting with the Department of Health, Department of Education, Department of Science and Technology, and PAGASA, in order to come up with a temperature or heat index level that they can agree among themselves as dangerous. If the current convention being used by local officials for canceling classes is the correct one, then we might as well consider canceling the school year by next week, because newsflash: it is going to get even hotter in April and May.
If we are determined to continue holding classes, for the sake of the future generations who still need an education, then we need to retrofit classrooms and schools in general, to be able to deal with the heat during the summer and the rains during the wet season. That is already part of our climate change mitigation efforts, since we don’t do much about climate change on a macro level anyway, which means hot days are only going to get hotter and the wet days wetter. Making our classrooms better equipped to deal with those weather variations so kids won’t have to miss too many days of school will have to be the way. Classrooms don’t have to be air conditioned, but improved ventilation and insulation, as well as less overcrowding, can do wonders in making a room more livable despite the heat.
Aside from the classrooms, the routes to and from school will also need upgrades. Sidewalks, if they are finally made walkable, will need shade which works both when it’s rainy and when it’s hot. Public transportation also needs to be weatherproofed so society can continue to function even when the weather isn’t ideal. Roads and sidewalks will need to be floodproofed, as well as have planted areas which allow for better drainage and prevent heat islands that occur when there is too much concrete.
If you come to think of it, calling off classes whenever it rains too much or becomes too hot is not a sustainable solution. Our towns and cities need to be more resilient so that cancellation and work and classes only happens during really extreme situations, and not just about every other week, or every time the weather gets a little more hotter or wetter than usual.*
