By the time wildfires tore through his home county of Sonoma, California, Park Guthrie was already convinced that the clock on the climate catastrophe was running out. In 2015, Guthrie, a sixth-grade teacher and father of three, had approached the superintendent of the school district where he worked, hopeful she would sign a resolution endorsing action on climate change. He says he got nowhere.

But after attending an advocacy event in Washington two years later, and hearing that the U.S. government has known of the dangers from burning fossil fuels for a half century, Guthrie decided to think bigger. In July 2017, he started a campaign called Schools for Climate Action. He set up meetings with leaders of other nearby school districts, pressing them to declare climate change an urgent issue that is harming kids.

Then the Tubbs Fire hit, leaving 1,400 children in Sonoma County homeless, devastating six school buildings and bringing classes to a halt for weeks. Guthrie and his children had to put on protective smoke masks to attend a county board meeting where members were scheduled to vote on a climate resolution. At the time, October 2017, the Tubbs Fire was the deadliest wildfire in California history, but it would be eclipsed the next year by the Camp Fire, which leveled the town of Paradise. Six of the worst wildfires in California history have occurred in the last four years.

Read the full article about the role of school leaders in climate change by Caroline Preston at The Hechinger Report.