It's 4:30 on a hot July afternoon. 34 second graders are sitting in an unventilated classroom, doing worksheets.
Their school has the duct work for air conditioning, but the schoolboard didn't have the money to install an air conditioner. The building has few windows, mostly small, narrow, and set high up which makes them hard to open.
The classroom is cooled by a big, noisy electric fan. So children are sitting in a stuffy, smelly classroom trying to concentrate on fill in the blank work sheets.
One of the first grade teachers lets her students nap on hot afternoons.
A third grade teacher shows videos.
This second grade class has the bad luck to be stuck with one of those teachers, who keeps them doing worksheets all day every day.
There are, by the way, 39 kids in the class. Four of those kids have parents who keep them at home on very hot days, rather than allow them to sweat in a hot classroom. One cut school with his older brother.
Go up the hall to the sixth grade classroom, and you'll see most of the boys are absent. They cut school on hot days, and hang out, maybe by the river, maybe in somebody's air conditioned house. Before we make the school year longer, we have to change the way school works.