For the Government of the City of Buenos Aires, the solution to extreme heat that is suffered in schools with overcrowded classrooms, without adequate ventilation and patios without shade, is to bring bottles of water to the students. Cold water, a service that was supposed to be within the reach of the students.
The unique methodology to combat high temperatures was announced by the Minister of Education, Soledad Acuñawho through social networks reported the purchase of at least 170 thousand bottles that will be distributed as of today in the different educational centers.
The initiative, according to the official, was the product of brainy meetings of their “technical teams” who evaluated how to “address the situation” caused by the heat wave, which peaked last week with temperatures around 40 degrees of thermal sensation.
This current week the values dropped and it is estimated that for the next few days the weather will warm up. And when everything is expected to be better, the Government of Buenos Aires decided to act but without activating works in the institutions with serious building problems.
Acuna announced that the “cold water distribution operation” It will serve “to promote more intensely hydration in schools.” And together with the delivery of bottles, there will also be insightful recommendations designed ad hoc: “Avoid sun exposure at critical hours and reduce physical activity.”
Part of the advice is also to control “symptoms such as red, hot, and dry skin, headache, nausea, or a weak pulse,” Acuña listed.
The questions about this basic initiative to distribute water, an elementary component that should always have been within reach of the students, were not long in coming because the improvements in the school infrastructure to alleviate the heat wave is a long demand from the educational communities and sectors of the opposition in the Buenos Aires Legislature.
The legislator of the Frente de Todos Claudia Neira responded to Acuña through the same channel that the minister used: “The water should have been sent days ago. What you have to solve now is the arrangement and purchase of fans and air conditioners”.
Such as Page|12 published days ago, the list of public schools with severe problems of courses for lack of fans and air conditioners. In some of them, there were students who decompensated and classes had to be interrupted.
In several of them, the few fans that exist were bought by mothers and fathers who make a private monthly contribution.
From the Multisectorial for the Public Schoolmade up of student centers, the UTE-Ctera union and Cooperadoras en Movimiento, had warned last year of the collapse that the lack of remodeling works and building improvements could generate.
During 2022 they had submitted a report warning that more than 200 schools had severe infrastructure problems, more than 20 percent of the total, as reported by this newspaper.
