The economics of cooling hot classrooms as school opens for the fall.

I'm David Brancaccio in New York.

Students are returning to school now and for millions classrooms will be hot.

More than 10,000 schools nationwide don't have air conditioning.

According to the Center for Climate Integrity, I see 93 degrees as a high in some places in the Midwest in eastward today and some schools are

releasing students early or closing altogether this week.

Marketplaces Daniel Ackerman has more on why schools lack AC. Back when many schools were built in cities like Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Chicago,

air conditioning wasn't really needed during the school year. Now though,

we can't fight off the hot weather by opening a window anymore.

Travis Roach is an economics professor at the University of Central Oklahoma.

He's found that classroom heat is bad for student test scores.

It's harming our productivity. It's harming our

productivity, it's harming our learning. But adding AC can cost hundreds of

millions of dollars for large school districts, says Paul Shenowski,

emeritus professor of engineering at UC Boulder.

This is one of the toughest problems that's out there because we have such local authority in schools.

He says some districts issue bonds to pay for AC, but that's not an option everywhere.

It's a real equity problem then that you're creating districts that can afford it versus districts that

not. Shinowski says the COVID stimulus helped some schools with AC, but it didn't move the needle

nationwide. I'm Daniel Ackerman for Marketplace.

About two years ago, Albertsons and Kroger proposed what would be the largest supermarket merger in U.S. history, a $25 billion deal, but federal regulators have sued to stop that saying

Albertsons plus Kroger will be too big with 5,000 stores under one

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