Temperatures soared into the triple digits today and some students had little relief from the heat inside classrooms with no air conditioning.
In one classroom at McKinley Elementary School, students endured 98 degree temperatures with only fans to keep them cool.
Madeline Ohman, a 5th grader at McKinley Elementary, said the person sitting next to her has asthma and kept taking out her inhaler.
“It was really stressful,” she said.
Temperatures are not expected to come down until the end of this week. A heat advisory is in place until Thursday 6 p.m.
San Diego Unified School District says it’s planning to upgrade or install air conditioning inside two thousand classrooms, including those at McKinley Elementary.
"We absolutely understand families' concerns with the warm weather this week and how it can impact conditions at schools while we work to complete the planned A/C upgrades this fall and all of the planned whole-site modernizations,” the district said in a statement.
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There isn’t a clear date for when the plan will be implemented.
Madeline’s mother said this weather is just too much for her children, especially without any air conditioning inside classrooms. She’s opting to keep her kids out of school tomorrow, when temperatures will reach the high 90s.
Madeline said she loves school but when it’s hot, it’s just too much.
San Diego Unified and most other major school districts will have normal schedules Thursday but Coronado Unified will let students leave early.
In the San Diego Unified School District, 68 schools have AC in all instructional rooms, according to a district official.
The rest of the district is made up of 118 schools with air conditioning in 50 to 99 percent of the instructional rooms. Forty-seven schools have AC in less than half of the instructional rooms and 37 schools have no air-conditioned classrooms that are used for instruction, according to the district.
