Cranky readers recall glories of classrooms without air conditioning

School starts Wednesday in most of Long Beach and it’ll likely be a hot day. Unbearably hot? Depends what you can bear. While we type this, the forecast is for a high of 86 degrees. We can, theoretically, bear that, coming from hardy pioneer stock. But we won’t. We will wake up in our air-conditioned home, make a mad sprint to our air-conditioned car and drive to our air-conditioned office. Hours later, we will do the whole thing in reverse. We don’t live in an average temperature. It’s 72 degrees all the time in our little world.

Meanwhile, more than half the students in Long Beach in the K-12 grades will be sitting in classrooms without air conditioning, not made any cooler by 25-30 sweaty and panting kids. In coming weeks this summer you can depend on temperatures reaching 100, with classroom interiors climbing to 110 degrees or higher.

Yeah, we know, it doesn’t rise to the level of Sudanese problems, but the point is it’s a fixable problem. And it’s a problem that’s been fixed in homes and virtually every place of business, including the Long Beach Unified School District’s administrative offices.

We wrote a story in Monday’s Press-Telegram about the huge expense associated with installing air-conditioning throughout the district (likely more than $750 million, which would come with the passage of a $1.5-billion bond in November).

Response to the article on social media, and we imagine in the public at large, has been divided between sympathetic and the more creepily amusing feedback best summed up as “I didn’t go to school with air conditioning and look how good I turned out!”

One woman commented: “Wait while I get out my tiny violin. I grew up in the LBUSD and there were NO classes with air conditioning. We ALWAYS had at least one heat wave after school started, which was AFTER Labor Day. And we had to wear real ‘school clothes,’ not light play clothes.”

Tell us about polio and corporal punishment, too.

“And,” responded another person to the previous one, “Look at you. You turned out just fine. These kids today don’t know what it’s like to know discomfort.”

Yes, they do, as a matter of fact, at least those who are battling the twin fronts of climate and algebra through the hot summer months – and they’re getting more humid and hotter, not cooler.

Merely surviving discomfort isn’t any cause for a campaign ribbon for heroism. If that makes you a greater human being, quit coddling yourself with indoor plumbing and lights that flick on with the flip of a switch. Outhouses and whale-oil lamps were all our forebears had and look how good they turned out, you puffy pillow-handed softie.

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“I’m sure you’d be (angry) if your place of employment had no air conditioning,” wrote a more compassionate commenter. “Or your favorite restaurant or your doctor’s office.”

Improvements in the quality of life have become standard almost everywhere but in our classrooms. It’s time to let the kids in on the cool indoor breezes that adults use regularly and take for granted for their own comfort.

Contact Tim Grobaty at 562-714-2116, [email protected], @grobaty on Twitter.