Hot Topic

It will come as no surprise to fans of MassCOSH’s Teen’s Lead @ Work that our youth leaders are hard at work pushing policies that will help prepare school districts for the undeniable future of hotter temperatures from climate change. This month, their efforts are focused on gathering the input of thousands of their classmates on the impact of heat in classrooms to find effective, youth-led solutions to achieving climate justice.
 
After attending December’s Boston Public Schools Youth Community meeting, TL@W didn't want to assume that all Boston Public School (BPS) students want to cancel school if classrooms are above 85 degrees, so the peer leaders created an online survey to see which schools face hot classroom conditions and to collect data for future use. TL@W is partnering with the Boston Student Advisory Council to help distribute the survey to as many high schools as possible. The plan is to administer the survey at the end of January and to collect data for about a month.
 
The survey is part of the work made possible by a generous grant from the Barr Foundation to develop and expand strategies to protect workers and students in Massachusetts from increased health and safety risks resulting from climate change.