Hurricanes and wildfires are closing schools. How can students get back on track?

In hurricane-ravaged western North Carolina, the schools have provided a necessary lifeline.

Asheville City Schools emptied its freezers and pantries so food could be sent to emergency shelters. Its bus garage donated fuel to help run generators at local nursing homes. A high school football field morphed into a landing zone for helicopters. And T-Mobile set up a Wi-Fi and charging station in a middle school parking lot.

“Right now, it’s about giving resources,” says Kimberly Dechant, chief of staff for the roughly 4,000-student district in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

The complicated task ahead – educating children whose families and communities have been starkly affected by extreme weather – underscores a reality that experts say is playing out daily worldwide. As climate events intensify, more schools are closing either temporarily or for prolonged periods of time.

The United States alone has been a case study in recent weeks. Thousands of miles west of Hurricane Helene’s path, wildfires have triggered school closures in California, Oregon, and Nevada.

The torrential rain and wind brought by the hurricane one week ago wiped out roads, buildings, power lines, cellphone towers, and water system infrastructure – along with entire towns – in this mountainous region. So far, authorities have reported more than 200 deaths associated with the storm across several states. And hundreds of people remained unaccounted for as of Thursday.

The district’s schools were not damaged, which Dr. Dechant calls a “blessing.” However, given the storm’s regional destruction, instruction has been paused indefinitely. The neighboring Buncombe County Schools has made a similar decision, noting on its website that schools will remain closed until it is “safe to open.”

Still, Dr. Dechant says a team is discussing when and how learning can resume for students. The conversations involve input from educators who taught during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. She says a key question is this: “How did they respond with limited resources?”

Lifesaving efforts take precedence after natural disasters strike, and rightfully so, say the authors of a World Bank report published last month that details the effect of climate events on education. The economists are among a growing number of voices calling for heightened awareness about weather-related learning disruptions and ways to mitigate academic and emotional harm.

“The student that leaves the school before a climate shock is very different from the student that returns,” says Sergio Venegas Marin, an economist with the World Bank. “And I think that’s something we have to remember.”

Measuring climate’s effects on education globally

The World Bank estimates that at least 404 million children around the globe experienced a school closure associated with extreme weather events between January 2022 and June 2024. In Pakistan, for instance, severe flooding closed schools for more than three months – or roughly half a typical academic year – in 2022.

Lost instructional time ranged from about 18 days per school year in low-income nations compared with about six days in higher-income countries, according to the report, which is based on closures reported through press releases or by news outlets.

The economists say the problem is likely much larger. Governments typically aren’t tracking weather-related school closures yet.

“To improve on something, you have to first measure it or track it,” Mr. Venegas Marin says.

UndauntedK12, a nonprofit advocating for climate-resilient public schools, has been trying to track such closures in the United States. The group’s interactive U.S. map indicates that a majority of states have had schools shuttered for at least one climate event, including extreme heat or cold, flooding, hurricanes, severe weather, and wildfires.

“It is an emergency unfolding for America’s children,” says Jonathan Klein, co-founder and CEO of UndauntedK12.

While an occasional missed school day might not raise alarm bells, experts say the cumulative effect is worrisome. The increasing frequency of extreme weather events means students will likely face closures repeatedly over the course of their academic careers. Remote learning, which carries its own inequities, isn’t even possible if, as with Helene, severe weather cuts electricity or internet capability.

“Those kinds of small disruptions of a few days of school closed here and there compound that problem,” says Sara Hinkley, the California program manager for the Center for Cities + Schools at the University of California, Berkeley. “They disrupt the habit of going to school. They disrupt some of the extracurricular activities that keep kids coming to school.”

Solutions for climate-related effects on education

So what can be done to minimize climate-caused learning disruptions?

Experts say there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Severe storms and wildfires that render schools uninhabitable or impossible to access differ from, say, poor air quality or extreme heat.

UndauntedK12 has been urging American school districts to take advantage of tax credits for clean energy equipment through the Inflation Reduction Act. Electric buses, solar power, and ground-source heat pumps are among the eligible technologies. For cash-strapped schools, these types of improvements can save millions of dollars over the long term, Mr. Klein says.

Researchers say modern ventilation and heating and cooling systems can also gird against closures associated with extreme heat or wildfire smoke if they make schools safer places to be amid poor air quality or high temperatures.

Dr. Hinkley suggests communities prepare for catastrophic weather events by taking stock of all available facilities. Which buildings could be quickly converted to makeshift learning hubs if schools are damaged? Conversely, could other structures serve as command centers to free up schools for students’ return?

“How can we get some facilities up and running quickly to be able to give students … a place to learn, even if it’s a place to go to be doing hybrid or remote learning?” she says.

Experts also point to calendar flexibility as part of the solution. Schools may need to adjust their start and end dates to avoid peak storm, heat, or wildfire seasons, for instance, or be able to add extra learning hours when such natural disasters force closures.

Record-breaking heat in May kept millions of children out of school in Asian countries such as India, Bangladesh, and the Philippines.

“To the extent possible, we have to think beyond just a handful of calamity days,” says Shwetlena Sabarwal, a lead economist at the World Bank’s Education Global Practice.

And when it is safe to resume schooling, Dr. Sabarwal says, communities need a concerted effort to not only bring back students but also a plan for how to help them catch up academically.

Extreme weather requires resiliency

As Hurricane Helene bore down on the southeast last Friday, Sinclaire Houston was among the thousands of students not physically in school. The ninth grader at West Charlotte High School in North Carolina emailed her math teacher with questions during the remote learning day. As the region confronted extensive damage, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools canceled school entirely on Monday.

Sinclaire says she didn’t mind getting to sleep longer on Monday, but she wondered what the disruption would mean for scheduled tests. The cheerleader and honor roll student says remote learning days can be useful for review but are challenging for making any progress.

“Teachers aren’t there to actually tell me what I’m doing wrong and tell me how to do it correctly,” she says.

Her peers further west in the state face even more uncertainty. Dr. Dechant of Asheville City Schools describes ongoing concerns about children’s safety and access to basic needs like food and water. Her voice fills with emotion as she talks about how the community has rallied together through the crisis. She reflects on students dealing with back-to-back traumas, starting with the pandemic.

“These kids are going to grow up to, I hope, be extremely resilient adults,” she says. “... But it’s unfortunate that these are the experiences that they have to have to build that resiliency.”