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Wednesday, June 11, 2008 • BY JULIE O'CONNOR AND PHIL READ • Star-Ledger Staff

In Elizabeth, the school district provided bottled water for their 22,000 students, started to run out, then replenished their supplies with an emergency shipment of 1,000 more cases.

At North Caldwell's Gould School, students sat in front of fans, studied for quizzes in the hallway and typed stories on a computer with the lights off.

And at Long Valley Middle School in Morris County, students in Debbie Tardive's sixth-grade math class stuck their hands under faucets and camped out in front of fans that stirred the sultry air, counting themselves lucky to have been relocated to a cooler classroom on a lower floor.

"Upstairs is like going to Haiti," Tardive said. "It's too hot to think."

That was a common conclusion yesterday across New Jersey, where temperatures reached the upper 90s for a fourth straight day, and hundreds of school districts gave their students relief in the form of early dismissal.

Before a line of gusty thunderstorms rolled through in the evening, bringing cooler air behind them, towns across the state shat tered heat records during another blistering day. Hillsborough in Somerset County hit 99. New Brunswick reached 97. Newark Airport tied a record at 98.

And down at Miller Air Park in Ocean County, one station reported a temperature of 100 de grees.

"The Pinelands take the prize as the furnace of the state today," state climatologist Dave Robinson said.

Not that anywhere else was exactly a cool spring day, especially in the state's classrooms, where reports of indoor temperatures above 90 degrees were common. It was so hot at least one district, Scotch Plains-Fanwood, decided against holding classes at all, while most districts had early dismissals. And for those district that didn't have short days, it wasn't unusual to hear heat-stoked griping above the roar of the window fans.

In Newark, where the vast majority of schools lack air condition ing, principals were given the op tion of calling for early dismissal. Still, Newark Teacher's Union President Joseph Del Grasso said his office received more than a thou sand calls about excessive heat from teachers and parents.

Those receiving the most calls, union officials said, were Samuel Berliner, Chancellor Avenue, Mount Vernon, Dr. William Horton, and Barringer Success Academy. Calls from Luis Munoz Marin School reported classrooms over 100 degrees Monday, the union said. They said Horton School not only kept students until the end, but held a staff meeting at 3 p.m.

"There were stories beyond reason," Del Grosso said.

Elsewhere, parents simply gave their kids the day off to save them from a sweltering schoolhouse. In Roselle, Chauntwanette Okantey decided to keep her 8- and 9-year-old sons home.

"There's no airflow, no circula tion in the classrooms," she said of the conditions at Washington Elementary School and Leonard V. Moore Middle School, which let out students at 12:45 p.m.

Okantey discussed the issue at a Monday night school board meet ing, along with other frustrated parents. Fans were in short supply at the schools, with parents told that only board-approved models could be used because of potential electrical overload. Those fans, however, have not been purchased, and only Harrison Elementary School has been rewired to accom modate increased electrical output.

But Roselle Superintendent El nardo Webster said attendance at all six schools was average. "Heat wasn't a factor at all in deterring kids from coming to school," he said.

That wasn't necessarily the case in other places. At Montclair's Hillside School, Principal Michael Chiles said there were 87 pupils absent, more than 10 percent of the school's population.

For those who did show, Chiles had students rotating in bands of 60 at a time through what he called the school's "cooling center" -- but is normally known as the library.

A few blocks away, at Montclair High School, the dress code was on holiday as the early heat-related dismissal time of 1 p.m. neared.

"Hey muscle man," Principal Mel Katz said to a student clad only in a sleeveless T-shirt in a hallway.

Shorts, some shorter than others, were the uniform of the day in the hallways and in Room 313, a class being taught by Tom Manos.

"We'll get through this. Hang in there," Katz told students before he was back in the hallway and noting the relaxed dress code. "I'm not looking at it today. I'm not looking at it."

In the stairwell, he couldn't help but joke with a staffer. "I need signs, 'Be cool. Stay in school,'" Katz said.

In Ann Thornhill's third-floor Spanish class at Montclair High, ruddy-faced students, in her own words, were "very sluggish."

"They can't do very much," she said. "During second period, it was 89 degrees in here."

Still, most people did their best to find ways to cope. At Woodbridge Middle School, 12-year-old Jordan Zeliff said one of her teachers turned the lights off and instructed student to have quiet time, where everybody put their heads on top of their desks and stayed silent. In other classrooms, students brought in frozen water bottles.

"It's so hot," Jordan said.

Too hot to teach. Too hot to learn.

"The truth is, it's not an environment (students) can operate well in," said Hillsborough Superintendent Edward Forsthoffer, who dismissed schools early for a second straight day. "We can survive these temperatures, but certainly, it's not ideal."

Mostly, students, teachers, administrators -- and Tardive's math class -- just bided their time during a shortened school day that still seemed to drag forever.

"It goes on and on and on," said Amy Moore, one of Tardive's stu dents. "You just want it to end."

'It's too hot to think'

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