In August, Robert Padilla wrote to The Californian complaining about the removal of trees on Bakersfield City School District campuses and the harm being inflicted on students.

“Dread of the brutal heat shouldn’t be part of the back-to-school experience,” he wrote.

“During pick-up, parents are finding their kids desperately shielding themselves underneath their backpacks in the direct, unshaded sun during its most damaging hours.

“It seems protective tree coverage has been removed at schools including Bessie E. Owens, Lincoln Junior High, and likely others. How cruel! Our kids deserve better than this.”

Padilla is not the first parent or student who has complained about local schools being turned into vegetation and shade wastelands.

In 2018, young students and parents picketed their Voorhies Elementary School campus in an unsuccessful attempt to block the district’s plan to remove five decades-old mulberry trees from the schoolyard.

“Our kids love those trees. They don’t want to see them taken out,” Lori Pesante, then president of the school’s parent club, said. She pleaded with the school board to spare the trees. Parents even presented hundreds of names on a petition requesting that the trees remain.

But the district didn’t budge. The trees were being removed to make room for a solar installation that would save the district on its electricity bills. Voorhies was one of 15 district schools selected for solar panel installations.

A district spokeswoman also said the mature shade trees posed a safety hazard because they were old and decayed.

But if safety was truly the concern, a tree replacement program should have been started earlier to allow new trees to grow and continue to provide much-needed shade when the older ones were removed.

Clearly trees and shade for students have not been a top priority. But the Bakersfield City School District is not alone in this neglect.

A team of researchers from UCLA, UC Davis and UC Berkeley recently reported a vast majority of urban, public grade schools in California are paved-over “nature deserts” — lacking trees and shade. Most of the state’s 5.8 million grade-school students are left to bake in the sun during breaks and after-school pick-ups in often dangerous heat waves.

In a 2024 study, the nonprofit Green Schoolyards America found California K-12 schoolyards have a median tree cover of just 6.4%. More than half of that meager canopy exists as just decoration at school entrances, in parking lots to shade faculty and visitor cars, and as buffers along campus perimeters.

The UCLA researchers used portable weather stations and sensors to measure the temperatures in unshaded schoolyards. Children are more vulnerable than adults to the dangers of extreme heat because they haven’t yet developed the ability to regulate their body temperature.

In the report “Bleeding Green: California’s schools are rapidly losing tree canopy cover” posted on this month’s ScienceDirect website, researchers noted, “For many students in California, schoolyards are often the only accessible green space in their daily lives. Maintaining and expanding schoolyard canopies is critical infrastructure for children’s health and resilience.”

With rising temperatures expected to trigger more frequent and longer-lasting extreme heat events, some regions, such as the Central Valley, will have heatwaves persisting for weeks and school-aged children will be put at risk at unshaded schools, researchers warned.

Trees are being felled by both regulations requiring non-grass surfaces for sports and outdoor physical education, and administrative priorities, as well as districts’ desires to cut school maintenance costs.

In his letter to The Californian, Padilla urged “school staff, parents and students work together to find solutions to this problem.”

The Bakersfield City School District has responded to concerns pointing to its tree planting initiative. As an example, 15 trees were planted on the Casa Loma Elementary School campus in April with the help of a grant from the Tree Foundation of Kern and PG&E.

But in their “Bleeding Green” report, researchers note, “When planting large numbers of trees are constrained by budget, water availability, space, or staff capacity, it becomes even more important to guarantee that the trees already in place are properly maintained and allowed to reach maturity.

“This requires a long-term commitment that extends beyond isolated planting efforts. It calls for durable policies and funding streams that prioritize children’s well-being and recognize schoolyards as essential public infrastructure.”