'Helping Them Build Resiliency': How This Bay Area Preschool Is Protecting Kids From Extreme Weather

During the early October heat wave that set records across the Bay Area, young children at Fitch Mountain Preschool in Healdsburg crammed all of their outdoor play into the morning hours before temperatures reached dangerous levels.

They splashed at the water table, made watermelon juice with a hand-cranked blender, and played under a leafy willow structure. By 11, they retreated to their air-conditioned classrooms, where they stayed active by moving through an obstacle course.

Restructuring play time is just one part of the preschool’s overall strategy to adapt to extreme heat and other climate-driven events that are affecting young children in the region.

Some of their families have had to evacuate from their homes multiple times in recent years, beginning with the destructive North Bay wildfires in 2017 — either to avoid fire danger, unhealthy smoke created by the fires, or power shutoffs meant to prevent high winds from sparking another fire.

“When you look at what these kids have experienced during the first six years of their lives, the world is very unpredictable, dangerous and scary,” said Susan Gilmore, president of North Bay Children’s Center, which operates Fitch Mountain and 13 other preschools in Sonoma and Marin counties.

“It’s really about helping them build resiliency,” she said.

Fitch Mountain operates in a space rented from a local elementary school. About six years ago, it got permission from the school to rip up asphalt in the play yard and replace it with an edible garden. Mulch covers most of the ground except for the tricycle track and the outdoor dining area. The staff repurposed redwood tree stumps to form steps up to a slide and planted willows to create a tunnel-shaped structure.

On a hot day, you can go in and [the structure] can be as much as 20 degrees cooler,” said Teresa Fogolini, who directs the gardening and nutrition program for the center. “And it’s a living structure, so the children are learning and seeing and watching it grow over the years.”

Reducing children’s exposure to heat has become increasingly urgent as human-caused climate change has increased the frequency, size, intensity, and duration of heat waves. Researchers at UCLA found that on a 93-degree day, asphalt in school yards can get as hot as 145 degrees — enough to cause third-degree burns.

Children under age 5 are especially vulnerable to high temperatures because they have fewer sweat glands and have a harder time cooling down, which can make it hard for them to sleep well, said Lisa Patel, a pediatrician at Stanford Medicine and executive director of the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health. Young kids are often not aware when they’re experiencing symptoms of overheating and dehydration, she added.

She said the early childhood education field could do more to improve its infrastructure and come up with standards to deal with high temperatures, like making sure kids get enough water during hot days and recognizing when they may be suffering from heat-related illnesses.

“The early childhood and care ecosystem is so diverse, and so it’s hard to have a unified approach because some of them have been out of people’s homes, some of them happen in larger buildings, some of them happen from a business that is offering day care,” Patel said.

Patel said child care facilities in coastal areas that historically have had cooler climates need to prepare for warmer and longer heat waves. She said the San Francisco preschool one of her own kids attended didn’t have an air conditioner, so she helped to get an HVAC system installed.

Improving spaces like child care centers where young kids spend much of their time is crucial so that they’re protected from weather-related risks, according to a 2022 report by UC Berkeley’s Center for Cities and Schools and the Low Income Investment Fund (LIIF). The study said most early learning facilities are old, poorly constructed and “largely unequipped to withstand the impacts of a worsening climate.”

Among the California child care providers receiving a portion of the $350 million in state grants to help recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, many have requested upgrades to reduce climate impacts, said Angie Garling, senior vice president of early care and education at LIIF, which is distributing the funds. Projects include solar panels, shade structures, HVAC systems, insulated windows and misting systems to keep children cool when they’re playing outside.

Garling said child care programs across California also received another $30 million from a state grant to help school districts green their play yards.

The North Bay Children’s Center received $1.5 million in pandemic relief funds toward building a $12 million campus in Novato. The building will have backup power, air filtration and temperature control systems, allowing the center to stay open during hot, windy or smoky days.

Gilmore said the center will be a “resiliency hub,” able to stay open and be a gathering place for families during a natural disaster or local emergency — somewhere they can go and be safe instead of an evacuation shelter. She recalls that when the 2017 wildfires forced them to shutter one of their preschool sites, they were able to move everyone to another one, which helped provide child care for working parents and maintained a reassuring routine for the kids.

“We would minimize the trauma that these families experienced when everything did close down, and they didn’t have power or air filters at home,” she said.

Fogelini said the play yard will also have plenty of shade structures.

Beyond the structural improvements, she said the center’s staff teaches children about seasonal changes in the garden as one way to introduce climate change in developmentally appropriate ways. The center adopts the Reggio Emilia philosophy of early childhood education, which considers the environment a “third teacher” in addition to parents and educators.

The kids learn to recycle and compost food waste in worm bins as part of the center’s “Garden of Eatin’” curriculum, which has become a model for teaching young kids about the environment and has been adopted by early education programs in other states and countries like Uganda, Fogelini said.

The kids are also taught to routinely take water breaks. Fogelini said these are positive ways for children to build their “green muscle memories” and help them adapt to a changing climate.

“The more children understand what’s happening in their environments, the more they’re not going to be surprised or overwhelmed by the changes,” she said.