When George LaComb moved two years ago to a new high school in Orlando, Florida, he quickly noticed safety precautions that the football team at his previous, less affluent school never had.

There was a designated recovery room, staffed by a full-time athletic trainer, giant ice baths to cool overheated athletes and indoor facilities to practice if outside got too hot. At his old school in another part of Orlando, the football team relied on one makeshift ice bath and a cafeteria table to rest on when injured.

“There’s a vast difference between schools that have money and schools that don’t,” said LaComb, a senior at Lake Buena Vista High School and Florida state representative on the National Student Council, a membership group for student leaders. “Making sure each school has the resources to keep students safe shouldn’t be dependent on income.”

As climate change pushes temperatures to new highs, schools across the country are contending with threats to student health and safety on athletic fields, playgrounds and beyond. More than 9,000 high school athletes receive treatment for heat illnesses each year, according to past estimates from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2021, the most recent year for which data is available, nine high schoolers died from exertional heat stroke — a record. At least 65 teenagers have died from heat-related causes since 2000, according to an analysis by the Louisville Courier Journal.

For now, the United States has no national standard for heat safety in schools. That may change once federal regulators develop a workplace rule that would extend to schools. In the meantime, states have moved ahead with their own rules — ordering schools to adjust practice schedules, buy professional-grade equipment or hire licensed trainers who can spot and treat heat-related illnesses. How easily districts can comply, though — and whether they can afford to go beyond the bare minimum and make the sorts of investments LaComb’s new high school has — depends on the size of their budgets.

“The lack of funding and capacity in many places around the country will almost certainly lead to a continuation of the Swiss cheese heat health protections at the state and local level,” said John Balbus, former deputy assistant secretary for climate change and health equity at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Read the full article about climate change threatening student athlete safety by Neal Morton at The Hechinger Report.