This report is the second in a summer 2024 series of products from the Center for American Progress that focuses on policy recommendations to address the needs of populations that are particularly vulnerable to extreme heat.
Introduction and summary
America’s teachers often supplement meager classroom stipends with their own money to purchase everything from markers and cleaning supplies to snacks and toiletries for students who struggle with access to those items at home. This summer, for too many teachers, that list will grow to include fans, bottled water, digital room thermometers, and other supplies to combat high temperatures that make it impossible for kids to focus and pose serious risks to their health.1 This need will only grow as heat waves become more frequent, widespread, and intense across the country. For child care providers and early educators working with very young children, many of whom operate out of their homes, dealing with the impacts of extreme heat will be even more challenging.
As global climate change progresses, extreme heat is becoming an increasing concern for the children, teachers, and staff across the country who are left unprotected by aging schools and child care facilities.2 Researchers expect the United States to see an increase of nearly a month’s worth of annual extreme heat days by 2050 relative to 1976–2005, with much of the Southeast experiencing an increase of 40 to 50 extreme heat days—when temperatures top 90 degrees Fahrenheit.3
Some teachers are already sounding the alarm. In 2022, teachers in Columbus, Ohio, went on strike, naming unsafe classroom environments due to the increasing risk of heat emergencies and a lack of air conditioning in roughly a quarter of the city’s schools as one of their top three concerns.4 “Kids are coming to school and not even having their basic needs of comfort met; and if they don’t have their needs met, they can’t progress and learn and do all of those things we want them to do at school,” said Columbus elementary school teacher Madison McCulloch. “We have to meet these needs before we can expect them to learn.”5 McCulloch emphasized that broken air conditioning systems frequently forced school closures, especially during the hottest weeks at the start of the school year.6 Fortunately, after three days of picketing, the union reached an agreement that guaranteed all schools would be equipped with heating and cooling and that all learning areas would be climate-controlled by the 2025-26 school year.7
The Center for American Progress recommends the following five actions to protect the well-being of children and educators both now and in the future:
- The federal government should provide guidance on heat safety standards for children, and state and local policymakers should adopt this guidance to make schools and child care facilities safe, healthy spaces.
- States should expand data collection and tracking of schools’ infrastructure needs to inform advocacy, funding, and infrastructure updates.
- Federal policymakers should include school and child care facility funding in future infrastructure and early learning bills.
- Federal and state agencies should support schools and child care programs in accessing available resources to mitigate the impact of extreme heat, such as federal grants to fund clean energy infrastructure projects.
- Policymakers at all levels of government should prioritize environmental justice by centering community-led solutions and targeting funding and resources to the communities most affected by climate change and pollution.
In addition to these recommendations to protect children and educators from the harmful effects of extreme heat, federal, state, and local policymakers must build on the Biden administration’s ambitious climate agenda to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuel energy sources and toward a clean energy economy, reducing heat-trapping pollution that contributes to climate change.8
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Extreme heat is harmful to children’s health, learning, and development
This year’s temperatures are on track to exceed those of 2023—the hottest year on record in human history—with millions of people across the globe already experiencing dangerous extreme heat conditions.9 While excessive heat is dangerous for everyone, children are particularly vulnerable to adverse impacts on their health, learning, and development and will face greater lifetime exposure to extreme heat and other weather events, compared with previous generations.10
Children are less efficient thermoregulators than adults,11 resulting in their bodies heating up faster and taking more time to cool down.12 Children also typically spend more time playing and being active outdoors and rely more on adult caretakers to stay hydrated and to access shaded or air-conditioned spaces.13 While there is no federal standard for temperatures that pose a danger to children, many pediatricians and health experts agree that temperatures in excess of 85 degrees Fahrenheit are a risk to children’s health.14 High humidity, direct sun, and exercise can exacerbate the risk of heat, even on days with lower temperatures.
Especially when experienced frequently or for prolonged periods of time, excess heat can disrupt early development and increase children’s risk for short- and long-term health conditions, including those related to the heart, muscles, kidneys, brain, gut, skin, and immune system.15 When temperatures rise and stay high for too long, inflammation increases, leaving the body more susceptible to infection and disease.16 In extreme cases, high heat can lead to child deaths, including the 37 children, on average, who die each year of vehicular heat stroke.17
In addition to its health impacts, high heat negatively affects student attendance, engagement, and achievement. Extreme heat increases school absences,18 limiting the amount of instruction time students receive in a school year. Some schools without proper ventilation must resort to canceling classes or adjusting schedules during heat waves,19 which results in disruptions to students’ learning and does little to support children who may lack air conditioning access at home or are housing-insecure. For those who do make it to school, high heat conditions make it more difficult for students to concentrate and learn and decrease the effectiveness of instructional time due to physiological impacts on both students and teachers.20 These effects are worsened for students in the estimated 36,000 schools nationwide that are without adequate HVAC systems.21
Students taking an exam on a 90-degree day [are] nearly 11 percent less likely to pass than students taking the exam on a 72-degree day.
Notably, high temperatures can slow cognitive function and disrupt sleep quality, leading to slower reaction times on assessments, lower test scores, and greater learning loss.22 One study of 4.5 million New York City public high school exit exams found that students taking an exam on a 90-degree day were nearly 11 percent less likely to pass than students taking the exam on a 72-degree day.23 This decreased performance also led to long-term effects by reducing students’ likelihood of graduating on time by nearly 3 percent.24 Strikingly, the negative effects of hot school days on student achievement are mitigated when classrooms are sufficiently cool—by about 78 percent for students in schools with all air-conditioned classrooms.25
High heat days are also associated with a higher rate of K-12 disciplinary referrals among students attending schools without air conditioning.26 Such referrals lead to student classroom removals and lost instructional time, further affecting engagement and achievement.
Insufficient school and child care infrastructure fails to protect children, students, and staff from extreme heat
The average school building in the United States is nearly 50 years old, and existing funding models make it difficult for many districts to maintain and update facilities over time; thousands of schools are years, if not decades, behind on necessary repairs, and millions of children learn in buildings that are unsafe and overcrowded.27 Across K-12 and early learning settings, disparities in adequate infrastructure are often driven by a history of insufficient and inequitable public funding. An estimated 78 percent of public school districts use property tax revenue to address school facilities’ needs, which often leaves high-poverty districts unable to raise sufficient local funding due to low property values.28 High-poverty districts thus tend to rely more heavily than low-poverty districts on state funding for facility expenses, which limits options for maintaining and improving school facilities—particularly for districts in the 14 states without support for school facility funding.29 Even in the 36 states that did provide some level of funding to school districts for construction or renovation in 2020, funding amounts and mechanisms varied widely.30
By 2025, tens of thousands of public schools will need to install energy efficient HVAC systems or make upgrades to existing ones due to increased cooling needs—the combined costs of which are estimated to total more than $4.4 billion nationally.
By 2025, tens of thousands of public schools will need to install energy-efficient heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems or make upgrades to existing ones due to increased cooling needs—the combined costs of which are estimated to total more than $4.4 billion nationally.31 Many schools across the country rely on stop-gap measures, such as open windows and fans, that are not as effective at cooling buildings to safe temperatures and may increase exposure to outdoor toxins, such as air pollutants and stagnant particles, that also affect children’s health. Districts facing overcrowding that have set up portable trailers to serve as classrooms—which often have poor air quality and ventilation—need even more resources to construct sustainable expansions that can ensure the health and safety of their facilities.32
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Child care providers commonly cite facility improvements as a high need and report challenges with completing those improvements due to budget constraints.33 One of the most stated needs among Head Start grantees, in particular, is funding to replace deteriorated, out-of-date, or otherwise unsuitable physical spaces.34 A U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) assessment of child care facilities receiving subsidies in 10 states found that 96 percent had at least one potentially hazardous condition, inclusive of physical infrastructure needs.35 Due to patchwork child care funding structures and decades of underinvestment, child care providers—mainly small-business owners who are burdened with applying for and navigating limited existing funding streams on their own—face considerable challenges in merely keeping their doors open, let alone fronting expensive renovation costs to install or update HVAC systems, increase building insulation, or make other facility improvements to respond to extreme heat.
Extending beyond the classroom, school outdoor areas often lack heat-mitigating infrastructure, causing children to experience even more extreme temperatures on hot days. Play areas and school yards often have little shade and are built with dark-asphalt blacktops that absorb heat and can reach 145 degrees Fahrenheit on 93-degree days.36 On athletic fields, hot sports equipment and artificial turf, which gets hotter than natural turf,37 create an additional risk for children exercising outside, and some playground materials can reach dangerous temperatures capable of causing third-degree burns.38
Federal investments prompt infrastructure improvements, but sustained investments are needed to support schools and child care programs
The rollout of federal COVID-19 relief funds prompted many school districts to inspect and make large-scale improvements to outdated infrastructure, including to HVAC systems, water quality, and technology. A June 2022 analysis of more than 5,000 local education authorities found that about half planned to use funds to improve HVAC systems.39 While relief dollars were essential in keeping more than 200,000 child care providers afloat during the pandemic, the dire state of the child care sector even before the pandemic led many states to prioritize spending on reducing child care costs, supporting the child care workforce, and increasing quality of care.40 A handful of state agencies directed funding to address infrastructure and facility needs, including the New Jersey Economic Development Authority, which approved $20 million in grants to licensed child care providers for interior and exterior building upgrades.41
Moreover, recent federal investments through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) of 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022 included a number of competitive grant programs, tax credits, and financing options to address extreme heat through infrastructure upgrades and presented opportunities to reduce children’s exposure to pollution.42 However, these funding opportunities are largely unavailable to child care providers, and significant funding needs remain to address long-standing child care and school facility needs. Proposed funding in the American Jobs Plan—which ultimately passed as the IIJA—to build, modernize, and make energy updates to child care facilities was cut from the final version of the legislation.43 Similarly, the Biden administration’s proposal in the IIJA to include $100 billion to upgrade and build new public schools did not make the final cut.44
Missed opportunities to include school and child care facility funding in federal infrastructure packages and the limited, temporary reach of COVID-19 relief funds highlight the need for sustained school and child care infrastructure investments that allow schools and child care programs to make necessary facility updates, increase their climate resilience, reduce energy costs, and adapt to protect children and educators from the increasing danger of extreme heat.
The disproportionate impact of extreme heat exacerbates racial and socioeconomic inequities in health and educational outcomes
Communities of color—particularly Black, Hispanic,45 and Indigenous46 communities—and low-income communities are disproportionately burdened by the impacts of climate change. Residents of these communities are also often the most removed from the climate-resilient infrastructure and public health services they need to protect their health and that of their children.47
The enduring legacy of racist housing and finance policies has an especially observable impact on these disparities:48 According to one spatial analysis of 108 urban areas in the United States, historically redlined neighborhoods are, on average, nearly 5 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than non-redlined areas in the same city, with some cities seeing a difference of almost 13 degrees.49 Historically redlined neighborhoods are less likely to have adequate canopy cover and green spaces and are more likely to have heat-trapping infrastructure.50 Black Americans today are 40 percent more likely than non-Black individuals to live in areas with the highest projected increases in extreme temperature-related deaths and 34 percent more likely to live in areas with the highest projected increases in childhood asthma diagnoses due to climate-driven change in air pollution.51
Historically redlined neighborhoods are, on average, nearly 5 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than non-redlined areas in the same city, with some cities seeing a difference of almost 13 degrees.
Extreme heat exacerbates inequities for young learners, contributing to higher school absenteeism, particularly for Black, Hispanic, and lower-income students.52 Students from low-income households, for instance, are 6.2 percentage points more likely than their more affluent peers to be enrolled in schools with inadequate air conditioning.53 Less affluent child care providers and school districts often cannot afford to make necessary facility upgrades, such as installing or updating air conditioning units, heat pumps, insulation, or shade structures, or to manage the increased energy bills associated with cooling.54
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, a typical U.S. child care business operated with a profit margin of approximately 1 percent, leaving few resources for child care providers to prioritize facility upgrades.55 Minority-owned businesses—especially businesses owned by women of color and immigrant women—make up 60 percent of the child care industry, and these business owners are also more likely to be denied loans to make necessary facility improvements.56 Providers who operate as small independent businesses and care for a handful of children out of their homes face particular challenges maintaining and updating physical infrastructure.57 Head Start facilities, which serve mainly young children in poverty, require funding to address facility needs; an estimated 50 percent of facilities are 50 years or older and more than 60 percent need physical infrastructure improvements.58
Climate-resilient infrastructure helps reduce the impact of extreme heat on children
A range of infrastructure improvement strategies have the potential to benefit young children in the near term by protecting them from the immediate consequences of extreme heat conditions—and in the longer term by slowing the progression of climate change.
Adequate ventilation, air conditioning, and, especially, heat pumps—which have a smaller carbon footprint and lower energy costs compared with HVAC units59—are essential for maintaining safe indoor temperatures that support children’s health and learning. Additional building updates, including window shading, insulation, and air sealing, help conserve energy while keeping indoor spaces cool. Moreover, installing cool roofs, such as white-painted roofs, green roofs, and solar panels that can collect and provide a source of energy while also reflecting heat, can further help bring down indoor temperatures while also reducing energy usage and costs. Repairs and updates to water fountains and water-bottle filling stations, meanwhile, can help ensure children have a source of safe drinking water to stay hydrated throughout the day.
How districts are leveraging federal grant programs to create heat-resilient learning environments
The Renew America’s Schools program is channeling $500 million in competitive grants from the IIJA for K-12 school districts to use on clean energy improvements, prioritizing rural and high-poverty schools.60
Among grantee projects:
- Virginia’s Nottoway County Public Schools plans to use its grant award to complete several energy improvements to better learning environments, including LED lighting upgrades, high-efficiency window replacements, and installation of a modernized, high-efficiency HVAC system.61
- Warner Public Schools, located within Cherokee Nation, will use grant funding to install new HVAC systems and make other building updates that are expected to reduce overall utility costs; the district plans to reallocate these savings on other needed resources, including teacher salaries, books, and computers. Because school buildings are also frequently used for community events and gatherings, the benefits of these facility improvements will extend beyond academics.62
Improvement projects should extend to outdoor spaces that children frequent, such as playgrounds, school yards, outdoor lunch areas, paths between buildings, and transportation. Strategies may include increasing tree coverage and installing shade structures; decreasing asphalt and artificial turf coverage while increasing natural ground cover when possible; increasing the use of heat-resistant playground materials; and ensuring that school buses are air-conditioned and insulated.63 As one example, the Urban and Community Forestry Green Schoolyards grant program in California, funded by a voluntary tax contribution, is channeling $30 million for greening initiatives at child care facilities to cool outdoor play areas and mitigate extreme heat exposure.64
Communitywide climate resilience projects protect children beyond the school day
Policies to protect children from the impact of extreme heat must involve communitywide infrastructure improvements to public spaces and transportation.
Strategies may include:
- Ensuring that public bus stops and other transit hubs have shaded shelters and increasing the frequency of public transport services, especially during periods of extreme heat65
- Installing energy-efficient air conditioning units on public buses and other modes of transport
- Ensuring that community spaces, such as public libraries, gyms, and recreation centers, are adequately ventilated and equipped with energy-efficient air conditioning units
- Establishing designated, accessible cooling centers for individuals to shelter from the heat, including in schools, libraries, and recreation centers66
- Installing and maintaining water fountains and water-bottle filling stations to help keep children hydrated
- Planting trees to increase shade coverage and reduce the prevalence of urban “heat islands”
- Updating playgrounds by using heat-resistant materials and adding more shaded areas
- Installing splash parks so that children have spaces for play and cooling off on hot days
The IRA has invested $1 billion in competitive grants for nearly 400 community projects nationwide to combat extreme heat, improve climate resilience, and expand access to green spaces.67 As part of the Justice40 Initiative, 40 percent of these benefits will go to disadvantaged communities that are disproportionately affected by climate change.68 Critically, local governments seeking to conduct communitywide climate resilience projects must engage community members in identifying and ensuring that infrastructure improvements are accessible and match local needs related to extreme heat.
Policy recommendations
To produce widespread long-term benefits, policymakers must prioritize a combined approach that protects children from immediate climate change effects while also continuing the transition to a 100 percent clean energy economy—working toward the Biden administration’s goal of reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by midcentury in an effort to stabilize global temperatures at 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming.69
The federal government should provide guidance on heat safety standards for children, and state and local policymakers should adopt this guidance to make schools and child care facilities safe, healthy spaces
The lack of an evidence-based federal heat standard for children results in wide variation among the state and local authorities that do set heat standards. In California, for example, child care licensing requirements mandate that facilities maintain a temperature range between 68 and 85 degrees Fahrenheit for child-occupied spaces.70 Meanwhile, the Maryland Office of Child Care recommends that facilities maintain a temperature range between 74 to 82 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer months,71 and Washington state child care licensing requirements define dangerous heat as temperatures in excess of 100 degrees Fahrenheit, pursuant to the advice of a local authority.72 Lee County School District in Florida has a contingency plan in place for high heat: A heat index of 91 to 103 degrees means physical outdoor activity time is reduced by half and students take a water break every 10 minutes; at a heat intext of 104 to 125 degrees, athletic practices and outdoor events are likely to be canceled.73
The federal government should establish evidence-based, standardized guidance on safe temperatures and humidity ranges for children—for both indoor child-occupied spaces and outdoor recess, sports, and activities. Building on the precedent that some states and school districts have set for including heat standards in licensing and accreditation requirements, state and local policymakers should adopt federal guidance to ensure that children are not forced to learn, play, and exercise in dangerously hot conditions. Standardized federal guidance should include clear information about the unique risks of extreme heat for children, including the additional risks for student-athletes and children exercising outside; provide insight into how to identify signs of heat illness; and offer strategies to reduce children’s exposure to extreme heat. Schools and child care providers should be required to share these informational materials directly with families, athletic coaches, and educators at the start of the school year and in advance of extreme heat emergencies.
States, school districts, and child care authorities can also use policy levers and existing health and safety standards to require that facilities are equipped with adequate cooling infrastructure, though states and local authorities must ensure that schools and child care programs are supported with funding to meet these requirements and that heat standards are also in place. Mississippi accreditation standards, for instance, require school districts to provide air-conditioned classrooms, and the Los Angeles Unified School District requires all schools to be equipped with functioning air conditioning.74 The New Jersey Legislature, meanwhile, has introduced bills each year since 2007 that would require school districts to adopt temperature-control policies to ensure school buildings provide students with a temperature-controlled environment appropriate for health and learning.75
States should expand data collection and tracking of schools’ infrastructure needs to inform advocacy, funding, and infrastructure updates
Although there is some, largely localized, data on the nation’s school and child care infrastructure challenges, considerable gaps in tracking and reporting this information make it challenging to assess where investments are needed most. Local, state, and federal agencies should expand and better integrate their data collection and tracking, including by creating more comprehensive inventories of school and early learning infrastructure to identify which facilities need and should be prioritized for upgrades.
The patchwork landscape of child care and early learning programs in the United States presents some challenges for collecting and consolidating data on facility needs at the state and national level. However, existing agencies and monitoring processes present some opportunities to collect and consolidate data on child care infrastructure needs related to the increasing danger of extreme heat. For example, Head Start’s Environmental Health and Safety (EnvHS) baseline tool, a collaboration between the Office of Head Start (OHS) and Office of Child Care, conducts annual interviews and facility observations of Early Head Start-Child Care Partnership grantees in early stages of their grants.76 OHS should update the EnvHS baseline tool so that survey and observation questions specifically address facility needs related to extreme heat, including whether programs have functioning HVAC systems, maintain a safe indoor temperature range, provide adequate shading in outdoor play areas, and have a plan in place for protecting child health during periods of extreme heat. OHS has also conducted surveys of Head Start and Early Head Start programs on physical facility needs, including in a 2015 facilities report that identified significant needs for repair, renovation, and new construction.77 OHS should conduct more frequent surveys and use these surveys to maintain a database of infrastructure needs and updates, similar to how the agency maintains annual enrollment and program delivery data in the Head Start Enterprise System.78
State child care licensing agencies are also well-positioned to collect and consolidate data on infrastructure needs as part of their onsite inspection and reporting processes of licensed child care providers.79 Even if licensing standards do not specifically include requirements around climate-resilient infrastructure—considering the financial and logistical burdens this may pose to providers without adequate technical support or funding—onsite inspections are an opportunity for states to identify and track licensed child care infrastructure needs, including the availability of functioning air conditioning and outdoor shade and green space, and to share guidance with programs on child heat risks and safety practices. State child care lead agencies should consolidate this information to identify programs with outstanding infrastructure needs and to support these programs in accessing available services and funding.
A 2020 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report of K-12 facility needs estimated that 16 percent of districts had not conducted a facilities condition assessment in the past 10 years; 21 states reported that they did not conduct statewide assessments or require districts to conduct assessments. States should conduct more frequent facility needs assessments to identify and track infrastructure needs, estimate costs to address those needs, and inform state funding distribution. As the Federation of American Scientists has recommended, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should update its School Indoor Air Quality Assessment to include heat-related information regarding existing infrastructure and the status of the facilities on days that qualify as reaching extreme temperatures.80 The National Center for Education Statistics should also add heat-related questions to the School Pulse Panel survey regarding temperatures in student-occupied spaces, how the school maintains building-wide temperature controls, and the availability of temperature-controlled environments if the school lacks air conditioning.81
Furthermore, comprehensive records of school absences and closures during extreme heat events are crucial for better understanding the extent to which high temperatures are disrupting learning by keeping students out of the classroom—as well as the longer-term consequences this may have for students’ academic outcomes.
Federal policymakers should include school and child care facility funding in future infrastructure and early learning bills
A 2021 analysis found an $85 billion annual gap in the level of funding for maintenance, operation, and periodic capital improvements in public schools.82 That same analysis estimated it would cost $1.1 trillion over the next 10 years to modernize and replace obsolete school buildings and systems nationwide.83 Most public school systems rely on local property taxes for a substantial portion of their financing, and child care programs, except Head Start, are largely privately funded through parent tuition. Many of these facilities are already years, if not decades, behind on necessary upgrades, and the increasing danger of extreme heat creates additional urgency to ensure buildings are climate-resilient and equipped to keep children and staff safe.
The federal government is the only entity able to fill the $1.1 trillion gap and reduce regional and interstate inequities due to varying levels of ability and willingness to address climate change across states. Although recent legislative efforts to include funding for K-12 schools and child care programs have appeared in proposed federal investment bills, policymakers have not successfully closed the deal. For example, the president’s request for Congress to include $100 billion in the IIJA to upgrade and build new schools did not make it into the final bill signed into law.84 Similarly, the president’s request for Congress to include $25 billion in the IIJA to upgrade child care facilities and increase the supply of child care in areas that need it most did not make the cut.85
Moving forward, federal policymakers must ensure that school buildings and child care facilities are included and prioritized in long-term federal investments in order to close funding gaps and ensure children and educators have access to safe and healthy facilities. For K-12 schools, this could include the Rebuild America’s Schools Act, which, if passed, would invest $100 billion in grants and $30 billion in bond authority to improve public school facilities, focusing on high-poverty schools, to reduce health and safety risks. Similarly, future federal funding for child care support and supply-building should designate funds to address facility needs while increasing programs’ energy efficiency and overall climate resilience. If passed, the Child Care is Infrastructure Act, introduced by Rep. Katherine Clark (D-MA) in March 2021, would require the Administration for Children and Families to conduct short- and long-term facility assessments of child care programs and would establish grants for states to improve and construct new child care facilities.86 The Head Start Expansion and Improvement Act, introduced by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) in September 2023, would establish a grant program for eligible Head Start facility improvements, including renovations, water and plumbing improvements, updates to HVAC systems, new and expanded outdoor play spaces for children, among other weatherization efforts.87
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Federal and state agencies should support schools and child care programs in accessing available resources to mitigate the impact of extreme heat
Some federal funding is already available for schools and child care facilities to use on climate resilience and infrastructure improvement projects. Still, funding opportunities—many of which require competitive grant applications—can be complicated and confusing for schools and child care providers to navigate. Schools and child care programs may also be unaware of certain grants that are not explicitly targeted toward school infrastructure but may be used on climate resilience and heat mitigation projects; many IIJA and IRA competitive grants that are open to “local government entities,” for example, consider school districts to be eligible applicants.88 Federal, state, and local governments must ensure that schools and child care programs are informed of available resources that can be used for heat mitigation infrastructure, have examples of how other communities have adapted to extreme heat, and are supported in accessing those funds.
The IIJA and IRA contain several grant programs, tax credits, and financing options to address extreme heat through infrastructure upgrades. While child care programs can qualify for some of these infrastructure improvement funds as small businesses and nonprofit entities, it is important to note that the IIJA and IRA include no grant programs specifically directed to child care and early learning programs.
Some key federal programs include:
- The Renew America’s Schools program is channeling $500 million in competitive grants from the IIJA for K-12 school districts to use on clean energy improvements, prioritizing rural and high-poverty schools.89 The program granted $178 million in awards to 24 selectees for the 2022-23 Renew America’s Schools grant. Nearly all the selectees were Title I schools, and more than half are located in rural locales.90
- The IIJA is directing $5 billion for grants and rebates through the EPA’s Clean School Bus Program to replace older school buses with electric school buses and other buses that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.91 As of May 2024, nearly 1,300 school districts have received awards to replace more than 8,500 school buses, improving air quality and reducing the levels of pollution to which children are exposed.92
- The IRA provides refundable tax credits (“direct pay” or “elective pay”) to school districts that can be used alongside grant funds to help fund clean energy infrastructure projects, such as purchasing electric school buses or installing solar panels on school roofs.93
- School districts and child care facilities can access the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF), which provides low-cost financing for green energy projects in low-income and disadvantaged communities. Such projects include building decarbonization, construction of net-zero buildings, transition to solar power or other zero-emissions energy sources, and zero-emissions school buses.94 In addition to reducing emissions, these projects can specifically address extreme heat. For example, eligible projects could incorporate nature- and technology-based heat mitigation strategies to reduce energy expenditures or installation of zero-emissions HVAC systems.
- The Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program, administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, considers school districts local government entities and provides support for communities to undertake hazard mitigation projects, such as retrofitting buildings to make them more resilient. The BRIC program includes extreme heat in its list of eligible hazards.95
- The Community Change Grants program, administered by the EPA, allows school districts to apply in partnership with community nonprofits to work together on environmental justice projects that address climate resilience and build community capacity to address climate change, including extreme heat.96
- The Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), from the Department of Health and Human Services, assists low-income families with the costs of heating, cooling, and weatherproofing their homes; and it is anticipated that HHS will allocate a greater proportion of funding for cooling assistance as the frequency of extreme heat events continues to rise.97 Small child care providers who operate out of their homes and are often low income may, depending on state eligibility requirements, qualify for LIHEAP assistance as a household benefit to help offset energy and weatherproofing costs. In 2023, the IIJA provided LIHEAP with nearly $100 million, in addition to its $1.5 billion of regular block grant funding and other funding streams, in an effort by the Biden administration to support families in affording their energy costs.98
In 2024, the White House released an updated toolkit on federal resources for addressing school infrastructure needs, including funding opportunities, guidance resources, technical assistance opportunities, and points of contact for federal agencies.99 Most of the listed grant opportunities were directed toward K-12 schools, but the toolkit also listed funding opportunities for early childhood programs seeking to test water quality or reduce lead exposure risks.100 To optimize the impact of this resource, the federal government should engage in targeted outreach to ensure that those eligible for funding opportunities are aware of these programs and how to access funding. This is especially true for programs that are not specifically targeted toward schools. Additionally, the federal government should continue to update this toolkit when new programs are created or when changes are made to existing programs.
The first-ever Supporting America’s School Infrastructure (SASI) program launched in November 2023, providing $37 million in grants over five years to eight states across the country to support high-needs school districts in understanding, consolidating, and accessing available federal resources for school infrastructure projects supporting safe, healthy, and sustainable schools.101 An additional $10 million grant for the National Center on School Infrastructure program includes technical assistance to SASI grantees seeking to leverage funding to make sustainable infrastructure improvements.102 Once funding from the initial round of grantees has been implemented, state examples may serve as a model for ensuring that schools have the knowledge and support needed to access available resources to improve climate resilience and make necessary facility improvements.
The U.S. Department of Education and the Administration for Children and Families should conduct direct outreach to share notices of funding opportunity with local education authorities, schools, and child care programs through targeted advertisements, webinars, and proposal invitations. State governments can engage in similar awareness-raising and support efforts by sharing information between state education agencies, child care agencies, state energy offices, and other relevant agencies and by offering technical support for local child care providers and schools to navigate the application process.
There is also a role for the nonprofit sector and associations, such as the National Association of District Superintendents, in raising awareness of funding opportunities and helping district leadership understand how to apply for or access funds.
Policymakers at all levels of government should prioritize environmental justice by centering community-led solutions and targeting funding and resources to the communities most affected by climate change and pollution
The Justice40 Initiative, launched by the Biden administration in 2021,103 represents an essential commitment to using climate and clean energy investments as tools to address climate change and tackle legacy health and environmental inequities. State and local governments can use the Justice40 Initiative as a model to target and prioritize funding to communities and children most affected by climate change; specifically, the Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool interactive map and the Department of Energy’s Energy Justice Mapping Tool for Schools can help local officials identify areas disadvantaged by underinvestment and overburdened by pollution.104
Young children bear the least responsibility for causing and exacerbating climate change yet face disproportionately severe consequences from the extreme heat events stemming from it.
State, local, and federal policymakers must pursue a community-centered, child-driven approach to addressing climate change. One such model is the Community Change Grants program, created by the IRA and administered by the EPA.105 In addition, cross-national think tank Capita recently introduced a transformative model for climate financing that centers the needs of children and families, for instance, by supporting a collaborative research and policy agenda and investing in social and physical infrastructure changes that best meet the needs of the next generation.106 There are a number of global examples of these efforts that U.S. federal policymakers should look to for replication, including the Urban95 initiative in Brazil, the “urban acupuncture” approach in Albania, and the development of the South Africa Early Childhood Climate Action Alliance.107
Conclusion
Young children bear the least responsibility for causing and exacerbating climate change yet face disproportionately severe consequences from the extreme heat events stemming from it. The increasing intensity and frequency of extreme heat poses meaningful risks to children’s health, development, and learning and creates an urgent need for leaders at all levels of government to take policy action to protect children from the immediate impacts of extreme heat, while also building on the Biden administration’s ambitious climate agenda to slow climate change.
Federal policymakers should establish evidence-based guidance for schools and child care programs on heat standards that are safe for children and support state and local leaders in adopting that guidance. To address long-standing facility needs and help ensure children and educators have access to safe, healthy, climate-resilient facilities, federal policymakers must include sustained funding for school and child care infrastructure in future infrastructure and early learning bills; and state and federal agencies must support schools and child care programs in accessing available resources. Expanding data collection and tracking of school and child care infrastructure needs and centering community-led solutions is critical for ensuring that investments and policy actions are targeted to effectively and equitably protect the next generation.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Jill Rosenthal, Andrea Ducas, Cathleen Kelly, Weadé James, Casey Peeks, Jasia Smith, Kate Petosa, Jared Bass, and Emily Gee for their invaluable insights and feedback. The authors would also like to thank Erin Grant for her thorough fact-checking and support throughout this report’s development.