As students at New York City schools increasingly experience the impact of environmental injustice, climate activists are urging Mayor Eric Adams to electrify, ventilate, and retrofit hundreds of public school buildings in the city by 2030.
Schools in New York City have long lacked resilience to environmental challenges, particularly in communities of color. Because Black, brown, and low-income children are disproportionately exposed to air pollution, they also suffer from higher levels of asthma. Poor air filtration regularly leads to students missing school, and asthma is one of the major drivers of chronic absenteeism in NYC public schools.
More than 150 New York City schools flooded in September. Some teachers said they were forced to wade in dirty, brackish water to enter their building, and one school in Brooklyn was forced to evacuate. About 28% of New York City public school buildings are at risk of extreme stormwater flooding, with the majority located in Brooklyn and Queens.
“If you think back over 10 years ago during Hurricane Sandy, New York City lost $19 billion, which was just for the infrastructure costs in the aftermath,” said Faiza Azam, the climate and labor organizer for the Alliance for a Greater New York (ALIGN).