I firmly believe that providing a quality education cannot come at the expense of a future where our children will no longer have a safe and stable environment to live. This crisis requires action now, not next year, or the year after that.
I am committed to moving our public school infrastructure towards zero or net negative carbon emissions as soon as possible.
We are already experiencing unacceptably hot days during the school year and as those number of days of excessive heat increase we will be faced with the unfortunate trade off of having to cool our schools more and more, which increases our energy consumption and thus increases our carbon footprint. The solution is to construct more energy efficient infrastructure and improve what infrastructure we cannot replace to take advantage of renewable resources, as well as adding shade where possible to reduce the need for cooling.
This is not just an issue about comfort - cognitive performance decreases by as much as 20% when students are too hot - this is a critical issue to educating our children today, and providing a world where we will even be able to worry about education.