New fact sheet: 2024-25 extreme weather and school closures
The 2025-26 school year is just getting underway, with teachers, students, and families looking at the year ahead with promise and purpose. Amidst the excitement, we’ve been looking back, carefully analyzing the data from the 2024-25 school year to understand how extreme weather events impact schools and students.
Our new fact sheet and accompanying dashboard shows just how much instructional time was lost to climate-related school closures and disruptions in 2024–25, and it’s sobering.
California students lost at least 8,789,704 hours of instructional time in the 2024-25 school year due to school closures and disruptions from extreme weather.
More than 1300 schools and 700,000 students were affected by these closures. That’s more than 1 in 10 California students.
94% of closures were due to wildfires, many of which are attributed to the devastating Los Angeles wildfires in January of this year.
At least 3 school districts were closed for more than 10 days.
The data is sobering, but it also offers a clear signal: schools must be at the center of our climate resilience strategies. By investing now, we can protect learning, safeguard student health, and build a stronger future for California’s children.
