Giving Compass' Take:
- Anna North writes about how school closures due to disasters have a lasting impact on students.
- How can donors respond to the immediate and long-term needs to students and educators after a disaster?
- Find more recent news about education.
- Search Guide to Good for local nonprofits.
What is Giving Compass?
We connect donors to learning resources and ways to support community-led solutions. Learn more about us.
Kids lose so much when a disaster strikes. Too many have lost family members to the wildfires that have raged across Los Angeles in recent days. They’ve lost homes. They’ve lost the sense of security and predictability that so many kids depend on. And, to add insult to injury, many of them have lost their schools.
Disasters Cause School Closures in LA
At least nine schools in the Los Angeles area have been destroyed or severely damaged by the fires. Video posted by the principal of Odyssey Charter School’s south campus in Altadena shows flames still smoldering in the buildings as smoke rises from the playground, blotting out the sky. Marquez Charter Elementary School in Pacific Palisades “is dust,” one parent told The Cut. Meanwhile, thousands more schools were closed last week as communities faced evacuation warnings, power outages, and smoke-filled air, leaving more than 600,000 students out of school.
Unfortunately, these disruptions are part of a new normal for kids as climate disasters become more frequent. Last year, Americans experienced 27 weather-related disasters costing $1 billion or more in damage, the second-highest number ever — meanwhile, the number of days American schools are closed for extreme heat has doubled in recent years.
There’s often nothing officials can do to avoid a closure, especially if schools are damaged or without power. But “when schools close, kids aren’t learning,” said Melinda Morrill, an economics professor at North Carolina State University who has studied the impact of closures.
Research on school closures after Hurricanes Matthew and Florence in North Carolina is sobering. Especially in the early grades, “students didn’t bounce back,” said Cassandra R. Davis, a professor of public policy at UNC Chapel Hill who studied the closures. In some cases, the academic impact persisted for more than a year.
Beyond academics, millions of students rely on their schools for mental health support or services like speech therapy; millions more need the free or reduced-price food school cafeterias provide. Schools are also a crucial source of stability in many children’s lives, a place they go five days a week to see their friends, their teachers, their favorite books, their art on the walls, the special stuffed animal in the calm-down corner. Losing all that can be a huge emotional blow.
Read the full article about how disasters impact students by Anna North at Vox.