My daughter lying on the bathroom floor. That's the image I can't get past—her sprawled on the tile because it was the coolest surface in the house, too dizzy to sit up, too nauseated to eat. She'd come home from fourth grade with heat exhaustion, the grinding kind that doesn't require medical attention but leaves a child wrecked for the evening. The school had sent a note that morning: "warm day," bring water bottles.
The library at Lincoln Elementary fills by 6:45. We've pushed tables against the walls—forty people now, maybe fifty, more than came to last month's meeting. The room smells like old books and floor wax. Evening light slants through the high windows, making the dust visible in the air. A teacher from the high school is setting up a projector, her hands steady as she connects cables, loads the presentation she's been preparing for weeks.
Temperature data. Daily readings from classrooms across the district, color-coded by building, annotated with notes about student headaches, nausea, inability to concentrate. Last year: eleven heat days when students were sent home early because buildings were too hot for safe learning. This year the district is budgeting for fifteen.
I started asking other parents last September if their children were coming home sick. Turns out most were. We just hadn't been talking about it—treating it as individual bad luck rather than systemic failure. That's how the coalition started: parents realizing we were all experiencing the same crisis, that the district's response was to normalize it rather than fix it.
The teacher projects her data, and the numbers glow against the white screen. Someone near me is fanning herself with a folder. The library isn't air-conditioned either.
"The superintendent's plan is window AC units in forty classrooms," the teacher says. "And a seven-year infrastructure timeline if voters approve the bond measure."
"Seven years," someone says. "My daughter will be in high school."
My daughter on the bathroom floor. Her face flushed, her t-shirt damp with sweat, her eyes closed against the nausea. I'd knelt beside her, put my hand on her forehead, felt the heat radiating from her skin. She'd spent six hours in a classroom that hit 85 degrees, and the school called it a "warm day."
Stop trying to fix a September-to-June calendar designed for a climate that doesn't exist. Restructure around year-round schooling with distributed breaks instead.
A middle school teacher stands. She's been teaching for twelve years, long enough to watch September temperatures climb from uncomfortable to dangerous. Last year she moved her classes outside when the building hit 87 degrees, violating the lesson plan because keeping students inside felt like negligence.
"We're trying to preserve a school year designed for a climate that doesn't exist anymore," she says.
Stop trying to fix the traditional September-to-June calendar with infrastructure that won't arrive for years. Restructure the calendar instead. Year-round schooling with distributed breaks—nine weeks of instruction, then a week off. Concentrate outdoor learning in April, May, September, October when temperatures are tolerable. Run summer sessions in the few climate-controlled buildings the district has.
The superintendent says this is impossible. Teacher contracts specify work calendars negotiated over decades. State law requires 160 instructional days between specific dates. Year-round schooling means renegotiating everything, rewriting transportation schedules, coordinating with the community college, convincing parents to abandon summer childcare arrangements.
But parents are already abandoning their childcare arrangements—every heat day forces us to leave work early or scramble for emergency coverage. Teachers are already violating lesson plans to protect students. The system the superintendent wants to preserve has already failed.
A parent asks about the research showing year-round schooling doesn't improve test scores. I've read that research. It was done in districts that adopted year-round calendars to reduce overcrowding, not to adapt to dangerous heat. We're not asking whether year-round calendars boost achievement in normal conditions. We're asking whether they're better than sending students home when buildings become ovens, better than losing 1% of learning for every degree above comfortable.
I know what we're asking. Teachers who need summer break, who've planned their lives around it. Parents whose work schedules depend on the traditional calendar. The disruption will be real. Some families will leave the district rather than adapt. But my daughter on the bathroom floor—that was real too. We're already choosing disruption. Right now we're disrupting children's learning and health rather than adult schedules.
By eight the library has gotten warmer, the evening sun still heating the building. We've drafted a petition demanding calendar restructuring. We're targeting school board members who might be persuaded, organizing parent testimonials, planning to pack the next board meeting.
Walking to my car afterward, I think about the light through those library windows—how it made the temperature data hard to read on the projection screen, how we kept meeting anyway because this matters more than comfort. The board will call us naive, people who don't understand institutional constraints. But I understand that my daughter spent an evening on the bathroom floor because the institution prioritized its calendar over her welfare.
The coalition meets again next week. We're fifty people now, maybe sixty. The district wants seven years to install adequate HVAC. My daughter will be in middle school by then, learning in whatever hot classrooms haven't been upgraded yet. The board calls this responsible governance. We call it choosing institutional stability over children.
The traditional calendar is already broken. Every heat day proves it. Will the district respond to the crisis we're experiencing, or keep defending the timeline they've planned?