What happens to kids when their schools are destroyed?

This story originally appeared in Kids Today, Vox’s newsletter about kids, for everyone. Sign up here for future editions.

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.

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.

The students from Odyssey Charter School are meeting for now at a local Boys and Girls Club, where teachers and staff have been visiting them, principal Bonnie Brimecombe told me. Some kids who used to have big, vibrant personalities are “just not talking, and they just sort of sit,” she said. Others “are just hugging you so tight and they don’t let go.” 

Experts, educators, and families are just beginning to understand what helps students recover after storms or fires devastate their schools. But one thing they agree on is that districts and policymakers need to start preparing schools and students for the next disaster — today. “It’s going to keep happening over and over and over,” said Susanna Joy Smith, a mom of two in Asheville, North Carolina, whose kids were out of school for a month last year after Hurricane Helene. “We need to learn from these experiences and we need to adapt.”

Losing school hurts kids academically and emotionally

In the Los Angeles Unified School District, all schools closed for at least two days last week as the fires raged. Many reopened on Monday, but as of Monday evening around 10 remained closed, some because they were in evacuation zones and three because they had been badly damaged or destroyed, the office of LAUSD deputy superintendent of business services and operations Pedro Salcido told me. Students from Marquez and another destroyed elementary school will be relocated to two nearby schools for the rest of the school year. All 23 schools in the Pasadena Unified School District, which includes Altadena and other areas devastated by the Eaton Fire, remain closed this week.

It’s a disruption sadly familiar to more and more kids and families around the country. In 2018, the Camp Fire destroyed eight of the nine schools in Paradise, California. The same year, Hurricane Florence raged through North Carolina, forcing some schools to close for as long as 26 days. Then, last year, Hurricane Helene hit the western part of the state, destroying at least one school and leaving others closed for weeks due to flood damage and lack of power or water.

School closures after Hurricane Florence were associated with significant drops in students’ math and reading test scores, Morrill found, with the impact seen across demographic groups and among both higher- and lower-performing students. “All students are affected,” Morrill said.

For Smith’s older son, “missing a month of the second grade is just huge,” especially since the early grades are so important for building reading skills.

Many school districts are shifting to remote instruction for at least some weather-related closures, like snow days. But remote school was difficult for many students during Covid lockdowns, a time when kids experienced significant learning loss. Not every kid has access to a laptop or internet connection, and neurodivergent students or those with learning differences may especially struggle with virtual learning. 

The students at Odyssey are scared of a return to the days of pandemic virtual learning, Brimecombe told me. “There’s so much trauma from their experiences being on Zoom.”

The impact of missed days can also compound when disaster strikes the same kids again and again. In places like North Carolina, where “we typically get hit by a tropical storm every other year,” students can find their education disrupted again and again, pushing them further behind, Davis said. “It’s like a constant catchup.”

Meanwhile, students can struggle emotionally long after a disaster is over. Months after Hurricane Matthew, teachers had to stop class during rainstorms to help students who were afraid of getting “washed away,” Davis said.

In the wake of Helene, Smith’s younger son, who is 4, is very aware of the fact that “the lights could go out overnight and they might not go on for weeks,” she told me. “It’s heartbreaking, but it’s also the reality these kids are growing up in.”

Kids face a complicated recovery, too

Adults can still help kids cope with this reality, experts say. That means learning how to adjust curricula to account for lost time as well as providing mental health support to both students and teachers, Davis said. 

Kids also need to learn about climate change and disaster preparedness in school, Smith said. “They’re just life skills for kids today.” Vox’s Allie Volpe has tips for preparing kids for climate disasters; LAist has a list of resources for talking to kids about fires, specifically.

Making school buildings more climate-resilient is also important, experts say, something school districts around the country are already working on. And when disaster does strike, districts need to figure out how to get kids back to school as quickly as possible and arrange makeup time for the days they missed, Morrill said. It’s not enough to hold “weekend classes for the bottom 10 percent,” she told me. “Everybody is going to experience some harm.”

At Odyssey, the first priority is finding classroom space kids can return to — school leaders are reaching out to local churches and rental spaces, and have launched a GoFundMe to help with costs. They hope to be back in person next week.

When they are together in a new space, “we’re not going to start with learning,” Brimecombe said. “We’re going to start with community. We’re going to start with social-emotional lessons. We’re going to start with joy.”

What I’m reading

Fourteen-year-old Avery Colvert, whose school was destroyed by the Eaton Fire, has started a recovery fund for teens affected by the disaster. “I want specific items for these girls so they can feel like themselves again and get their confidence back,” she told Time.

A majority of 11- and 12-year-olds have accounts on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, or Snapchat even though the sites technically require users to be 13, a new study found.

Evidence for the benefits of “risky” play like climbing and jumping keeps piling up, but kids have less access to it than ever.

My younger kid and I are enjoying the perfect Days With Frog and Toad, in which other animals are weirdly mean (who hurt you, robins?) but the bond between the titular amphibians is forever.

From my inbox

This week, my older kid has been concerned about the wildfires in LA. I told him I am concerned too, but that it felt good to speak with people who are working on getting kids back to school.

Now I’d love to hear from you how you talk to the kids in your life about disasters like storms and wildfires. What are their questions? What are your answers? How are you helping them cope with the world we live in (and how are you coping yourself)? Let me know at anna.north@vox.com.