The January Palisades and Eaton fires left a scar across our Los Angeles County communities. The impact on the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) was profound, disrupting the lives of thousands of students, families and educators. Three of our schools sustained significant damage, forcing students and educators to relocate to other campuses.
As we do the ongoing work to rebuild and support our students and communities, we are confronted with the undeniable reality of the climate crisis. These fires are not isolated incidents; they are a stark manifestation of a changing climate that increasingly threatens our students’ future.
At LAUSD, we recognize that our changing climate makes wildfires, like those we just experienced, more likely to occur. Across the nation, other districts are facing similar challenges. In North Carolina, Helene’s devastating floods forced closures; in Wisconsin, Illinois and Maryland, rising temperatures have led to an increase in closures for “heat days.” Across the globe, 242 million students faced climate-related learning disruptions in 2024, the hottest year ever recorded.
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As educators, we have a responsibility to set students up for success — but right now, we are not sufficiently preparing students for a world fundamentally shaped by our changing climate. A newly released Youth Climate Literacy survey highlighted that 85 percent of U.S. teens have indicated moderate to extreme worry about climate change. Yet, despite these anxieties, far too many young people lack a basic understanding of how our actions affect their future — only 54 percent of young people recognize human-related carbon emissions as a main cause of climate change, and only 10 percent of teens feel confident in their understanding of climate solutions. Compounding the issue, 18 states do not even include teaching about human-caused climate change in their science standards.
The escalating frequency of extreme weather events should serve as a critical wake-up call. We must empower our students with the knowledge, skills and resilience to navigate our changing climate, and we must do the work to reduce our impact on the environment now to ensure they are afforded a safe and healthy future.
In 2022, LAUSD took a decisive step when our school board unanimously passed a resolution to integrate climate change education into curricula across all grade levels. Our Climate Literacy Task Force, in collaboration with Climate Literacy Champion educators, is developing curricula focused on climate solutions, local climate issues and trauma-informed activities. For instance, students at Sotomayor Arts and Sciences Magnet learn about sustainable agriculture by growing their own food, managing and composting food waste on site and helping to restore the native habitat of the historic Los Angeles River floodplain. Students at Virgil Middle School, responding to Minecraft Education challenges, envision building sustainable schools that run on renewable energy. Finally, LAUSD models sustainable practices as we work to have the largest fleet of electric buses in the country and transition to net-zero electricity by 2030.
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To truly prepare young people for success, however, our efforts must extend beyond the classroom. The Aspen Institute’s Planet Media Task Force, of which I am a member, recently brought together leaders working across education, informal learning, media, climate science and more to forge strong alliances to increase climate literacy. Museums and media can engage young people and meet them where they are. Parents empowered with resources and opportunities to participate can reinforce these lessons at home, fostering a community-wide commitment to climate action.
We have also partnered with songwriters to release the song “Wild Hope” to help make the connections between the wildfires and climate, our students and our ongoing work across Los Angeles. Planet Media created tips for parents to support them in talking with their children about climate; an “Earth Day Every Day” playlist on YouTube; and a teacher-approved app list to support kids’ understanding of climate basics.
We can’t wait for disaster to strike to take action, and we can’t let a federal retreat silence us. The stakes for our children’s future are too high. We need to work together and embrace our shared responsibility to empower the next generation with the knowledge and agency to foster a more resilient world. Young people are looking for us to lead, so let’s seize this opportunity to cultivate wild hope with a fierce determination to secure a bright future for us all.
Alberto M. Carvalho is superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) and a member of the Aspen Institute’s Planet Media Task Force.
Contact the opinion editor at opinion@hechingerreport.org.
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