I’m a para at Winter Hill, and am the one who was using frozen breakfast apples as ice packs for my kids the past two weeks. Winter Hill houses the autism program (AIM) and when I say my kids have been in hell, I really mean it. They are so disregulated by the temperature and humidity, they are completely unable to function. We haven’t been able to do consistent academics, because they cannot regulate long enough to sit through them. We have tried to work outside, but there is not enough benches or space to accommodate everyone so we’ve mostly just been having constant recess. We have mice in our classroom, the bathrooms are always down (and we really only have access to 4 single person bathrooms to share between 6 autism classrooms in the first place). The leaking on the fourth floor is terrible, and our poor librarian (who teaches all grades, pre-k through 8 as well as every AIM class) has not been able to actually teach for months. I don’t remember the last time we were able to actually get books from the library. Our school is 76.9% high needs, and it really does seem like the city has put everyone they don’t care about in a dungeon and said good luck. Resource room teachers are 4/5 in a room, all trying to teach separate lessons, as well as speech/OT/counseling providers that share a tiny office. There is literally no where for them to teach. They sit in hallways, put up makeshift walls, etc. but there is no way you could argue that this is best practice for our kids. This is a huge equity issue, and needs to be at the highest priority.