A seventh grade student in Toronto says her school board should either close schools on extremely hot days or install air-conditioning -- and some politicians appear to agree.

Clare Kovacs, a student at Forest Hill Public School, started a petition to make the demand because she says “people aren’t feeling well and it’s just a health hazard.” She added that the heat has also made students less productive.

Temperatures across the southern Ontario have exceeded 30 C in recent days, breaking records and prompting heat warnings five days in a row. Only 125 of the Toronto District School Board’s 584 schools are fully air-conditioned.

While the Toronto District School Board has set up “cooling stations” in a handful of schools, some parents, teachers and politicians say more needs to be done.

In daily question period at the province’s legislature Tuesday, Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown called the situation “unacceptable” and demanded that Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne “mandate a maximum temperature for Ontario schools in the event of extreme heat.”

Wynne responded by saying that she “had to move a meeting yesterday from my office to another room because actually I don’t have air conditioning,” adding that she also doesn’t have air conditioning in her house.

“Schools were built in a time when there weren’t the kinds of heat events that we have now,” Wynne went on. “That is exactly why we have put billions of dollars in the hands of the school boards,” she added. “I’m not in any way saying that work is completely done.”

New Democrat MPP Peggy Sattler also pressed the Liberal government on the “unbearable conditions,” to which education Minister Mitzie Hunter said that boards “have flexibility to add air conditioning,” if they choose to spend provincial funding that way.

The TDSB said in a letter sent home to parents that it is doing “everything within our means to to alleviate some of the discomfort being experienced, including the following actions:

  • Using fans to provide air movement, where possible.
  • Keeping lights and computers turned off, where possible.
  • Keeping doors and windows open.
  • Rotating staff and students into air conditioned areas within the school, where available.
  • Reducing strenuous activities, including gym and sports activities.
  • Creating cooling stations at schools without air conditioning (a long-term project to cool large areas such as gyms and/or libraries for students and staff to access during extreme heat).”