Students leave Tolman High School in Pawtucket at 11:30 a.m. yesterday as high temperatures resulted in early dismissals. Several districts opted to shorten their school day.

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The Providence Journal / Andrew Dickerman

Another record-setting scorcher descended on Rhode Island yesterday but Marvin Tejeda wasn’t going to let the oppressive heat push back his training regime.

Tejeda, a boxer and coach at Peter Manfredo’s gym in Pawtucket, trudged more than three miles on the Blackstone Boulevard running path yesterday afternoon as the temperatures crept into the mid-90s. He may have his first professional fight next month and he has to drop 11 pounds and get down to 147 pounds. Yesterday was a perfect day for some serious weight loss.

“It’s hot,” said Tejeda as he wrapped up his run and fired a few jabs in his sweat-soaked camouflage T-shirt. “It’s not easy.”

Yesterday was not an easy day for many Rhode Islanders who shuffled through the third-straight 90-plus degree day, a stretch that the National Weather Service said was the season’s first official heat wave.

And, for the second day in a row, a record temperature was recorded — 96 degrees, breaking the previous record of 94 degrees set in 1994. The high on Monday was 97.

It seemed like many municipalities, school districts and state residents weren’t sure what to make of the almost overnight arrival of the dog days of summer. Children in Cranston got a day off from school, while many other communities across the state and in neighboring Massachusetts and Connecticut opted for early dismissals.

On Monday night, Providence refused to close its schools, but that all changed yesterday. The children were let go an hour early and afternoon kindergarten was canceled. The early dismissal sent hundreds of students to Kennedy Plaza to catch a free ride to the beach. (An ozone alert was declared yesterday and the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority issued free bus rides.)

The buses filled so quickly that RIPTA staff had to order some students off a bus headed to Oakland Beach in Warwick.

One rider, Dulcilina Debarros, of Pawtucket, said she waited under a scorching sun for more than hour before she could board one of the buses.

But Debarros and the others lucky enough to find a seat were in for a disappointment: The state Health Department closed Oakland Beach and Goddard Memorial Beach, also in Warwick, to swimming because of high bacteria counts.

Mackerel Cove Beach in Jamestown, which was closed last Friday, also remained shut yesterday. And, at Barrington Beach, six feet of yellow goop, otherwise known as pollen, stretched across the shoreline.

Not everyone jumped on a beach-bound bus to seek relief.

On the South Side of Providence, the children who got out of school early yesterday grabbed monkey wrenches and cranked open fire hydrants.

Dozens of teenagers, men, women and children gathered around hydrants that gushed streams of water across Hamilton Street off Potters Avenue. Two boys, students at Hope High School and the Met School, said that cuts in afterschool recreational programs including delays in opening public swimming pools — gave them little choice.

“We opened it because the city’s got no pools open,” said Christopher, 15.

About a half-dozen boys used an old tire and wood plank to direct the cool waters at passersby and cars that snaked through the neighborhood.

Life should return to normal today as the temperatures drop back to the 80s. As of last night, there were no school cancelations or early dismissals. RIPTA riders will once again have to pay to ride the bus.

The last time Providence saw such a stifling bout with an early spell of hot weather was in 2001 when temperatures hit the low 90s for a three-day stretch from May 2 to May 4.

Neal Strauss, a local climate specialist for the National Weather Service in Taunton, Mass., said a heat wave in June is not uncommon. But, he said, what is out of the ordinary is that the average daily temperature over a 24-hour period has been about 20 degrees above normal.

He pointed out that Monday’s record-breaking temperature of 97 also included a low of 74 degrees, which resulted in an average daily temperature of 86 degrees. Despite record-breaking temperatures, National Grid has seen no heat-related power failures in Rhode Island in recent days.

“We have a half-dozen single outages scattered around the state that do not appear to be weather related,” said David Graves, a spokesman for National Grid.

Back on Blackstone Boulevard, Sal Gomes, 52, of East Providence, took a walking break from his four-mile run. He’s looking forward to a better run tomorrow when the temperature tops out in the upper 80s with a nice 10-mph northwest breeze.

—With reports by staff writer Natalie Garcia

bmalinow@projo.com