Public schools across Michigan can’t stand the heat. Summer vacation just ended, and they’re already taking days off. 

In Southfield, where I live, the public schools were closed Tuesday. It was too hot, with real-feel temperatures in the triple digits. So, there will be no school. Out of an abundance of caution.

If school has started, and your kids are at home with you because it’s hot in August, this is a good time to ask questions. 

First, what happened to all that stimulus money? Public schools in Michigan were granted a collective $6 billion in Covid cash, supposedly to make them safe. 

All that money to improve our schools, and nobody thought to spring for central air? Maybe some fresh window units? Are we to believe that the people who insisted on returning to school in August didn’t know it would be hot in August?

The Mackinac Center, my old stomping grounds, compiled the stimulus money that Michigan school districts spent during that pandemic. 

Salaries account for 31% of the money, by far the largest category. Covid cash didn’t make your school better, or safer, as it turns out. It mainly paid the salaries of existing teachers and allowed administrators to hire new ones. Now that the money has dried up, school systems like Ann Arbor did mass layoffs, while others are asking for taxpayer bailouts. This is hardly the transformational change we were promised.

One question: What does your school system have to show for all that stimulus money?

Another: Why was class in session this week? 

I was a kid, once. I can confirm that not much learning takes place after Memorial Day and before Labor Day. And, of course, starting early risks classes being canceled because it’s too hot. 

Adults interrupting the natural end of summer, just to turn around and cancel school themselves, represents a system failure. Not using a once-in-a-lifetime pile of money to buy central air, and using it instead to pay teachers, was strategic. Teachers got theirs on the front end and have a forever get-out-of-school-free card on the back end anytime there’s a hot day. In just a few years, they’ll be demanding another once-in-a-lifetime infusion of money. 

This is the exact opposite of an abundance of caution. It’s a ma’am-made disturbance of the force.

They’ll take summer from you one day and your school from you the next. Whichever is more inconvenient. What will happen tomorrow? Will the people who demanded your child’s presence now show up to educate them? Do you need child care or grandma’s help this week, or don’t you? Stay tuned!

What looks like a man-made attempt to bojangle for the next stimulus check is God giving your kid another blessed day of summer—another day of childhood. 

This was life as we knew it, before the abundance of caution.

What’s more cautious than the idea that if my kid spends 180-plus days in school per year, they’ll be “educated”? We have been conditioned to accept this, despite all evidence to the contrary. And even as we know full well that education isn’t what happens in the school building, not anymore. 

If it’s August and your kid’s not at school, worry not. They’re not missing much.

Still, you might want to ask about that air conditioning. 

James David Dickson is host of the Enjoyer Podcast. Join him in conversation on X @downi75.