How this one climate fix means a school nurse sees fewer students sick from the heat

When students would come to the nurse’s office at Johnson Senior High School in St. Paul, Minnesota, complaining of headaches and feeling too hot, Rebecca Randall was always ready. She would hand out water bottles, apply ice packs and ask the students to remove their hoodies and extra layers. Even the nurse’s office didn’t guarantee a refuge for students, sometimes reaching 85 degrees Fahrenheit (29.4 degrees Celsius).

But that was then. Last fall the school installed a heat pump cooling system, a type that makes use of the cooler temperatures underground. Now the school is no longer counted among the roughly 36,000 in the U.S. that the Government Accountability Office said need their heating and cooling systems updated.