While attempting to hold yoga poses during her morning gym class, senior Frida Beiko often feels uncomfortable and has trouble focusing due to the room’s high temperature.
“When it’s hotter, it’s harder to focus on [our teacher] because we’re also trying to manage our body temperature,” said Beiko. “Instead of fully concentrating on the poses, part of our attention goes to staying cool and dealing with how discomforting the heat is.”
According to Pawel Wargocki, professor of environmental and resource engineering at the Technical University of Denmark, studies on the effects of classroom climate observed that students were more distracted and fatigued in settings with elevated temperatures, which made it harder to focus on what their teachers were saying.
That fatigue is probably due to thermoregulation and the need to keep core body temperature constant, Wargocki said.
“More energy is used to remove heat from the body, and there is less energy for other activities,” Wargocki said.
According to Benjamin Krebs, research fellow at the University of Basel, passive hyperthermia, or elevated body temperature without physical exertion, impairs working memory but not simple attentional tasks, suggesting that more complex cognitive processes such as decision-making and problem-solving are more vulnerable to heat stress.
“If you’re exposed to [heat in a classroom] for one day, it’s not that bad, but if it’s for a week … this fatigue kicks in, and it’s worse to be exposed to heat cumulatively,” Krebs said.
According to Robert Tropple, facility manager at Glenbrook North, to better monitor and adjust classroom temperatures, installation of a new climate control system is scheduled to be finished and operational for the 2025-2026 school year.
“The system will place more temperature sensors and thermostats in the building and in classrooms, so we’re going to have better control of more areas,” Tropple said.
According to Wargocki, comfortable temperatures range from 64 to 79 degrees Fahrenheit, while temperatures 80 to 82 degrees Fahrenheit are considered elevated.
According to Tropple, the school’s heating and cooling system intends to keep the building between 70 and 73 degrees Fahrenheit.
Sensors monitor climates to cool down or heat up the building if the temperature exceeds or drops below that range, Tropple said.
The climate in the east end of the building, such as in the math classrooms, can be very different from the west end due to the sunshine coming in from the windows, which means that maintaining temperatures can be challenging, Tropple said.
According to Beiko, she thinks the school is making good progress with the installation of the new climate control system.
“I think that students in general will be able to focus primarily on what’s happening in the classroom rather than how comfortable they are with the temperature,” said Beiko. “So I think it’s very good that we’re making these changes.”