"CHICAGO -- When city students arrived for the first day of school under the blazing temperatures of a Midwest heat wave, staff greeted them with some unusual school supplies: water bottles, fans and wet towels to drape around their necks."

"What they couldn't always offer was air conditioning.

'It's kind of hard to focus because everyone was sweating,' said Deniyah Jones, a 12-year-old 7th-grader at Nash Elementary School on Chicago's West Side, which has just a few window units for the entire fortress-like brick and stone building."

Don Babwin and David Mercer report for the Associated Press September 2, 2013. [2]