A Queen Creek mother is demanding statewide heat safety standards for students after her ninth-grade daughter got sick waiting roughly 20 minutes outside Crismon High School for a delayed school bus during an Extreme Heat Warning. Bianca Gilmore said her daughter came home flushed, asking for water, complaining of a headache, and needing to sit down on the couch to recover.
Gilmore described the incident to ABC15 Arizona, which first reported that parents and community members across the Valley are increasingly worried about how schools handle student safety during extreme heat. In response to what happened, Gilmore has reached out to state lawmakers and the Arizona Department of Health Services to push for statewide student safety standards rather than leaving heat protocols up to individual districts.
The 20-minute wait unfolded as the National Weather Service in Phoenix had issued an Extreme Heat Warning, with Valley afternoon temperatures forecast to climb between 106 and 115 degrees, a stretch of dangerous weather Hoodline detailed in its coverage of an ASU hockey player’s heat collapse earlier the same week. That kind of heat has been a recurring theme across the Phoenix metro this month, from athletes to concertgoers who lined up for hours outside Valley venues.
District Points to Its Existing Response
Queen Creek Unified School District says it prioritizes student safety and provides a supervised, air-conditioned cafeteria stocked with water for students affected by transportation delays, per the district’s response reported by ABC15. The district also says it will continue evaluating its procedures and communication to make sure students have safe indoor options whenever buses run late…