A dozen schools have been damaged or destroyed in the Palisades and Eaton Fires in Southern California as dangerous winds continue to plague the Los Angeles area. Several other campuses have been closed due to mandatory evacuations.
As fire crews work to contain the flames, the country’s second largest school district, the Los Angeles Unified School District, is dealing with the aftermath.
“Uncertainty is the biggest challenge,” LAUSD superintendent Alberto Carvalho said. “Schools are usually the sites where normalcy is best achieved, regardless of the crisis we go through as a community.”
Jae C. Hong / AP
Students in Altadena, California, are also processing the loss.
“My mom told me before we had that play date that it burned down, like my classroom and everything in it,” Lucy Van Voorhis, a second grader, said. “I’m just really sad, because I loved that school.”
Parents of students from the now devastated private Pasadena Waldorf School, like famed singer Aloe Blacc, are searching for solutions. He hopes a school that has been shuttered for two decades could lend a space for learning.
“All of the parents and staff are boots on the ground looking for a place,” Blacc said.
Amid the wildfires, Blacc described feeling helpless, saying, “I couldn’t stop the fire from happening. I couldn’t save my children from this experience.”
But he added that the situation has offered him a new perspective.
“Is this an opportunity for our kids to learn what leadership looks like? What community looks like, what heroism looks like?”
As parents struggle with breaking the news to their kids about their homes or schools, teacher Blair Manzke reminds everyone of what matters most.
“The buildings and things are gone, but the actual Pasadena Waldorf school is not gone. It may seem hard to understand now, but what makes a school is us, the students, teachers and parents and all who help us,” she said.
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Many schools that are part of the LAUSD reopened on Monday.
On Wednesday, 700 children from the two elementary schools destroyed in the Palisades Fire will start class at new locations.
Schools impacted in the Eaton Fire are scheduled to start next week, including Pasadena Unified School District, which announced all schools will be closed through Jan. 17.
