Put on a down jacket or switch to a turtleneck sweater: for a few days now, the French government has been calling for people to turn down the heating and adapt to save energy. A French mayor explains how this can be done and recommends that the students put on fleece jackets.
The small French town of Périers has decided to give every school child a fleece jacket as the heating in schools is turned down due to the energy crisis. “The students have to feel good in order to learn,” said the mayor of the Normandy town, Gabriel Daube, on the France Bleu broadcaster . He called the procedure “one of the measures to reduce the city’s energy bill”:
“We will turn the heating down to 19 degrees. But that’s not enough. We have decided with the local council to buy a fleece jacket for every student in our schools to brave the cold.”
It costs the community around 6 000 euros to buy a fleece jacket for each of the 350 students. The mayor considers a temperature of 19 degrees in the classes to be acceptable, but when it gets very cold, the jacket is a help.
According to Daube, the schools in Périers have “an excellent educational team and a good reputation”. The students are “very close to the heart” of the community.
The mayor stressed: “I believe that the manageable expense for the fleece jackets contributes to the well-being of the students and thus to their general well-being.”