Too Hot to Stay in the Classroom

At Anacostia Senior High School in Southeast, which has no central air, students trickled out of the building after the early dismissal. The heat appeared to be taking its toll, as some students emerged with their pant legs rolled up high or their sleeves tucked in.

At Martin Luther King Elementary School, also in Southeast, fourth-grade teacher Georgie Wiley led Washington Teachers' Union Vice President Nathan Saunders and a reporter on a tour of her third-floor classroom. She pointed to an air conditioning unit that, she said, hadn't worked in two years.

Two fans were running, but a digital thermometer Saunders brought to the school registered 91 degrees.

"We have some kids with asthma up in here," Wiley said, adding that in recent days she has suffered from several heat-related ailments. "I think [Janey] should come to the school to see how unbearable it is for students to learn and teachers to teach."

Officials in several suburban Washington systems said that virtually all their schools have air conditioning. In Prince George's County, officials said 14 of 196 schools lack air conditioning but will get window units installed over the summer under a $10 million initiative.

The D.C. school board, after years of getting less capital funding than anticipated from the D.C. Council, voted recently to scale back a plan to address infrastructure problems through major rebuilding and modernization of schools, opting instead to allocate more money to short-term repairs.

Thomas M. Brady, the system's chief of business operations, said yesterday that repair crews have been dispatched to fix as many school air conditioning systems as possible before the last day of classes Tuesday and the beginning of summer school July 5.

But he said the air conditioning likely will not be fully operational until late August, when the new school year begins. "Give us a couple months, and I guarantee the air conditioning systems will work," he said.

Staff writers Nick Anderson, Tara Bahrampour, Theola S. Labbe, Robert E. Pierre and Paul Schwartzman contributed to this report.