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The new school year in the Region of Murcia got off to a difficult start, on Tuesday, when a primary school in Molinos Marfagones sent children home early because classroom temperatures had exceeded 32°C by mid-morning. CEIP Azorín, in Cartagena, became the first school in the area to invoke the Regional Ministry of Education's own back-to-school guidelines for extreme heat, with parents arriving to collect their children from 11.20am onwards.

 

The school has no air conditioning. For families on the Parents' Association, this was not a surprise. "From the early hours of the morning, the temperature in the classrooms was exceeding 32 degrees Celsius, and by 11am we were already picking up our children," said Esther, one of the mothers on the PTA. "This happened on the first day of school because the air conditioning plans are just on paper, but nothing has been done. We will not tire of saying that we want classrooms, not saunas, for our children."

 

AMPA president Natalia Martín confirmed the association has been pushing for action for years. "We've been demanding air conditioning for two years now. Not just for our school, but for all of them. We wrote to the Ayuntamiento to inform them of the situation, and they replied, as we already knew, that it's the responsibility of the Regional Ministry of Education. We haven't received a response from them."

 

The regional government, for its part, chose the first day of the school year to announce a €7 million investment in thermal comfort improvements across Murcia's schools, part of a wider €89 million Plan Climatiza committed to air-conditioning educational centres across the region by 2030. Regional president Fernando López Miras visited a school in Murcia city to make the announcement. The opposition was unimpressed. The Socialist Parliamentary Group's deputy spokesperson described the €7 million as "clearly insufficient," accusing the regional president of doing "absolutely nothing" to address the problem while temperatures in Murcia city again approached 40°C.

 

Children whose families could not collect them early were kept at the school, and lunch and transport services ran as normal. For the rest of the day, outdoor physical activity was cancelled and indoor activities were adapted to the heat. It was, by any measure, not how anyone wanted the school year to begin.

 

 

Image: CEIP Azorín/Facebook