Some 45 public schools opened yesterday with no heat as about a million students returned to classes for the first time since Hurricane Sandy rocked Gotham.
Parents said they received automated calls about schools being open but no heads-up that heaters weren’t working, even though temperatures dipped near freezing yesterday.
Kissy Antequera said she never would have sent her asthmatic kindergartner to PS 280 in Jackson Heights had she known.
“I have to make sure she stays healthy,” Antequera said. “I wish I knew about the heat. I would have put more layers of clothes on her.”
At the Spruce Street School downtown, a sign taped to the door read, “We have power but no heat — so bundle up!”
Some boilers in the basements of city schools date to the 1940s, and despite being flooded, they can be repaired — in time.
“My classroom is freezing!” said Rebecca Meyers, a third-grade teacher at PS 134 on the Lower East Side who wore gloves, a sweater and a hat in her classroom. “If children are cold, it’s hard to get the work done.”
Some schools were forced to serve cold lunches.
Mayor Bloomberg talked about the possibility of schools not having heat, but because more than 100,000 city dwellers still had no power, not all parents saw his news conference.
Of the city’s 1.1 million public school students, 73,000 were told to stay home because their schools were uninhabitable.
Forty-eight schools are structurally damaged, and students will be relocated; 18 still have no power; and 16 are being used as shelters for victims of Sandy, according to Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott.
Schools are closed today for Election Day.