“This is the biggest problem facing America,” Jens Ludwig, a University of Chicago professor, said flatly. Nonetheless, he told those assembled at the Washington, D.C., event sponsored by the , a think tank, “We do not have our hair on fire the way it needs to be.”

That disconnect is the subject of a new released Monday that further explores what many have labeled an “urgency gap.” To pinpoint the extent of the gap, the authors talked to parents about the signals they’re getting from teachers and schools about their children’s progress. Parents expressed little concern about lasting damage from the pandemic and typically thought their children were doing well in school — a view that researchers say is belied by dismal state and national test scores. 

The issue is “genuinely vexing,” said Morgan Polikoff, an associate education professor at the University of Southern California and the paper’s lead author.  

“Parents are overwhelmingly getting the message from grades and teachers that kids are doing fine-to-great,” he said. He attributes that upbeat outlook to how little parents pay attention to standardized test scores — the “external measures” that matter most to researchers. “We just never heard anything about standardized tests from the folks we interviewed.”

The 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress showed historic declines in math and flat performance in reading. According to this year’s spring test results, pandemic recovery remains elusive for some states. Several have continued to lose ground in reading and most have not surpassed pre-COVID performance in math. Last week’s release of international scores show U.S. students dropped 13 points in math between 2018 and 2022. 

Ludwig argues that U.S. students have made such little progress that the $190 billion Congress appropriated to address the COVID crisis is insufficient and lawmakers should find to fund high-dosage tutoring.  

“If we don’t remediate this pandemic learning loss, this cohort of 50 million kids will experience reduced lifetime earnings of something like $900 billion,” he said.

Those messages, however, don’t always get to parents. 

Given the gauntlet of tests schools administer, it’s easy for parents to get lost, said Meredith Dodson, executive director of San Francisco Parent Action, a group that advocated for schools to reopen and has recently pushed for improvements in the district’s reading program.

For many parents, “​​it’s hard to understand all the acronyms — this test versus that test, the state versus the national,” she said. “Parents just really want to trust their teachers. Is my kid on grade level or not?”

Even some parents who knew their children’s standardized test scores tended to put more stock in grades, Polikoff found. One parent interviewed for the study knew that a majority of students scored higher than her son on the NWEA MAP test in math. But, she said, “his knowledge is much greater than that” because he received a 3 on a scale of 1-3 on his report card, which “means they’ve achieved the mastery or whatever.” 

Researchers have documented  between grade point averages and , especially since the pandemic. from three organizations — EdNavigator, Learning Heroes and TNTP — showed an increase in B grades since the pandemic even among students who performed below grade level and were chronically absent.

‘Kids are not stupid’

Schools have also made it easier to do well, a vestige of pandemic-era incentives to get students to complete their work. Dan Goldhaber, director of the CALDER Center at the American Institutes for Research — and the father of two school-age children — said he’s increasingly “astounded” at how many chances students get to bring up their grades.

“Kids are not stupid,” he said. “They’re going to learn that, ‘No, I don’t need to study real hard for this test because I can just correct it after the fact.’”

It’s not a surprise, he added, that there’s been a lackluster response to some academic recovery efforts. A lot of districts have spent relief funds on less-effective remediation efforts, such as optional on-demand tutoring. And those companies typically get paid whether or not students improve or even use the service, according to . 

In response to disappointing results, some states and districts have shifted course. A few have with large online tutoring companies. Some have turned to “outcomes-based” contracts — in which tutors earn more money for better results. But others are sticking with . 

If districts are going to spend funds on tutoring, Goldhaber said, officials should “have some control over” which students receive the help and when it’s delivered.

He and Polikoff are among the experts urging educators to make test score data a much larger focus of their conversations with parents. And there’s some evidence that hard facts about students’ scores can be a wake-up call.

A November showed that among parents who knew their children were below grade level in math, improving those skills became their number one concern, more important than curbing the effects of social media and protecting them from bullies.

Being honest with parents starts at the top, said Nat Malkus, deputy director of Education Policy Studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. 

“Superintendents should not say, ‘We’re chugging along. We’re going to get there.’ They should say this is a huge problem,” he said at the Aspen event. Teachers, he added, need “political cover” to tell parents their children are behind. “It’s the truth and we need to deliver it.” 

But the news doesn’t always go over well. When Precious Allen, who teaches second grade at Betty Shabazz Academy, a charter school in Chicago, showed parents test results that indicated their children were a year or more behind, she said they grew “flustered” and complained about doing extra review sheets with their children after work. 

It was tough, she said, for them to “wrap their minds around” the data. She shared passages from that explains where children should be for their age to help parents understand how the pandemic threw their kids off track. “I had to bring a lot of science and research into it because sometimes the voice of a teacher is not enough.”

‘Worst possible time’

But not all educators believe assessments provide valuable or reliable information. Polikoff sees the separation between parents and the nation’s education scholars as part of a larger anti-testing movement that started brewing long . The pandemic pause on state assessments and accountability sparked a to limit the number of tests and try .

The Massachusetts Teachers Association, for example, is leading a to remove the state test as a graduation requirement, calling it “harmful.” The proposal drew sharp criticism from National Parents Association President Keri Rodrigues, whose organization trains parents to advocate for quality education.

“This is the dawn of a new era, where high school diplomas now become participation trophies,” she wrote in an . 

Testing critics complain that assessments take up too much instructional time and that the results rarely benefit teachers because they arrive after students have already moved on to the next grade. Others say high-stakes tests are racially biased against Black and Hispanic students. 

“There’s just very close to zero constituencies advocating for tests or that they matter,” Polikoff said. Republicans, he said, “want only unfettered choice” while the left is not defending the usefulness of tests “to ensure educational quality or equity.”

’The backlash against testing, he said, has come “at the worst possible time given the damage that’s actually been done.”

Sheikh experienced several hurdles, from losing community college credits to inconsistent academic advising, after transferring twice during the pandemic.

“When COVID hit, a lot of the resources I needed were cut off,” Sheikh told ����Ӱ��. “It was a bit of a struggle because I didn’t know the system very well, plus my parents never went to school here, so I was lost figuring out this process.”

As a South Asian immigrant woman, Sheikh’s experience speaks to the thousands of transfer students from marginalized communities who’ve had a difficult time achieving their dream to earn a four-year degree.

According to a new report from the , college transfer enrollment declined by 7.5 percentage points in fall 2022 and 14.5 percentage points since fall 2020 — the equivalent of 37,600 and 78,500 students respectively.

The steepest transfer enrollment drops were observed among lower income students who declined by 10.8 percentage points since fall 2019 — the equivalent of 225,200 students.

There was also a disparate enrollment drop for female transfer students compared to their male counterparts with a decline of 3.5 and 0.7 percentage points respectively in fall 2022 — adding to an overall decline of 9.2 and 3.9 percentage points since fall 2020.

In addition, transfer enrollment fell significantly for Asian, White and Native American students by 8, 6.1 and 3.5 percentage points respectively in fall 2022 — adding to an overall drop of 14.8, 12.2 and 7.8 percentage points since fall 2020.

“Even before the pandemic, that path from community colleges to four-year institutions was riddled with complexities and barriers that would hamstring even the most persistent students,” director Tania LaViolet told ����Ӱ��.

“So when you get the extreme hardships from the last few years and an experience that already isn’t built with you in mind, those things compound…and reflect the data we’re seeing.”

LaViolet said the inequities for lower income students to attend four-year universities needs more attention from policymakers and state leaders. 

“We know it isn’t a matter of if the talent is out there,” LaViolet said. “So how can we design better practices that serve the needs of lower income transfers? There are institutions out there who have done it, but the data shows it’s not happening at scale.”

LaViolet also said the disparities in female transfer enrollment doesn’t surprise her.

“Especially for those who are parenting students, who have families to care for and who have jobs, those real life circumstances combined with a challenging educational environment make it difficult for women to realize their educational goals,” LaViolet said.

Jeff Gold, the associate vice chancellor at the , agreed with LaViolet.

“When a pandemic hits, there’s existential challenges that come first and foremost if you’re caring for a family member, if you’re sick yourself or if you’ve got to go back to work,” Gold told ����Ӱ��. “But there’s certainly one that’s clear — child rearing responsibilities are disproportionately on the female side.”

Gold also said it’s troubling how transfer enrollment drops are not shared equally by students of all racial and ethnic backgrounds.

“We have to remember that we’re still living in incredibly tumultuous times, so there’s a context behind these numbers and they’re not out of the blue,” Gold told ����Ӱ��. “So the fact that the drops for our most historically marginalized students are much larger than our other students is incredibly troubling.”

John Fink, senior research associate at the , pointed out how transfer enrollment drops may “be slowing, but are still moving in the wrong direction.”

Looking forward, Fink believes these enrollment drops have implications for four-year universities that rely on transfer students as a core part of their enrollment strategy.

“Four-year institutions have really taken transfer students for granted,” Fink told ����Ӱ��. “This really should be a wake up call for them to rethink and focus on how they can better partner with their community colleges.”

Long before he arrived in the U.S. at age 16 with just $20 in his pocket — and longer still before he rose to prominence as New York State’s 2019 Teacher of the Year — Alhassan Susso would watch and learn how his grandmother in Gambia helped others.

She had tremendous influence in the community because she knew everyone’s story, he said, and used those deep connections to work toward a greater good. 

“She could recount seven generations of their families,” Susso said. “As a result, people listened to everything she said. I realized, if I know someone’s story well, I’m able to speak to them and understand them.”

Susso’s roots in his South Bronx school community do not stretch back quite so far but the 37-year-old social studies teacher has had a deep impact that spans from his current to his former students, their families and the impoverished neighborhood that surrounds them.

“He knows that we need him,” said Berena Cabarcas, Susso’s principal at International Community High School. “He is committed to our population.”

Susso’s students have stories that closely resemble his own. Soon after landing in Poughkeepsie, New York and being placed in 11th grade, Susso’s living arrangement with an older brother evaporated. He found himself on his own, working at a local grocery store to pay rent, squeezing in school and scrambling to do more than just survive.

Susso’s students, all of them in this country for less than four years and 99 percent living below the poverty line, come from across the world, with a majority hailing from Latin America, French West Africa and the Middle East. Taken together, they speak dozens of languages — including Wolof, spoken in Senegal; Fula, common in West Africa; French and Spanish — but are united in their struggle for assimilation and the fight for a better life. 

“What they share is being new to this land and trying to figure out how to successfully navigate that,” Susso said. “My job is to help them weave through some of the complex challenges they might face and make sense of their new home.”

Adama Bah, a 17-year-old senior who hails from Guinea, takes inspiration from her teacher’s lived experience. Repeated hardships and a series of personal tragedies meant that Susso had to set aside his own ambitions in America to help his family back home, delaying him from graduating college and beginning his career until his late 20s. 

“If he did it, then I can too,” Bah said, adding that every step she takes toward success creates a model for her younger sister. 

Susso starts his immigrant students on the path to college and future accomplishment in his now-famous Morning Class, an 8 a.m. gathering whose exceptional results are part of the reason he was named Teacher of the Year. Meeting an hour before school begins, he imparts lessons on everything from time management to personal finance, from mastering mindsets and emotions to creating vision boards and crystallizing goals. Students also get intensive instruction on interpersonal communication skills and leadership.

“I was writing an essay for a college class and was really struggling,” said senior Anarosa Encarnacion. “He teaches us to improve our writing and communication every day. But you need to come with a specific question: He makes you think about your work. You can’t just ask for the intro or the hook. You have to be specific.”

In 2015, when the class was first offered, 29 students attended and all went on to college, Susso said. The following year, 42 attended the class and 40 went to college. The Morning Class has since been replicated by his fellow teachers and is now a required course. While other factors are also at work, International Community High School’s graduation rate went from just to the year before the pandemic. 

One part in a community process

Graduating and going onto college can change the trajectory of a student’s life — and their families. But there are also pressing needs in the larger community, including persistent poverty and the threat of crime, that require here-and-now solutions.

To that end, Susso has paired his classroom work with broader efforts across the community, partnering with outside organizations like , which works to empower low to “no-income” immigrant women; , which seeks to curb violence in the Bronx and beyond; and the which collaborates with designers, educators, advocates and students to explain complex policy issues. Susso’s students work — and learn — beside him in these campaigns that broaden their world view and uplift their neighbors. 

Susso helped Sauti Yeti develop a curriculum meant to promote healthy relationships and combat teen pregnancy and allowed the organization to collect data from his students who agreed to serve as a focus group. That information then helped to inform workshops for women and girls all over the Bronx.

Students volunteered for years to organize Peace December’s annual conference, setting up the meeting space, serving as ushers and absorbing critical messages meant to help combat the crime that sometimes prompts their fearful parents to keep them indoors. 

“In Africa, we get to be outside, be kids and play around,” said Amy Samb, a 17-year-old senior from Senegal. “Here, you can’t: There are always cars coming … and there is so much violence, (parents) would rather us be in the house. We don’t really get to be kids.”

The Center for Urban Pedagogy invited Susso’s class to examine several urgent issues, including immigration. For that project, he had his students fan out into the South Bronx to interview residents about the undocumented: Their efforts culminated in a pamphlet students distributed throughout the community explaining the rights of U.S. citizens and non-citizens. 

The Center later shifted its focus to food stamps and the minimum wage. Just as he did with immigration, Susso required students to ask community members, including local business owners, about the proposed hike to $15 an hour. Such exchanges are critical, Susso said: His students cannot properly work on behalf of others unless they understand their needs. Just as his grandmother did. 

“The people you are advocating for,” he said, “you want them to be part of the process instead of subjects of the conversation. It is always important to talk to community members to find out what they think about the issue we think they need help with. Instead of being the expert on this issue, you are learning about it and providing meaningful feedback.”

The comfort of keeping in touch

Some 100 former students showed up at the school on the day that Susso was announced . Among them was Fatou Boye, 24 and a preschool teacher at P.S. 96 in the Bronx. 

Boye graduated from high school in 2016 and credits her former teacher for helping her identify and work toward her goals, particularly through his Morning Class.

“It made me who I am today,” she said. “I’m very responsible because of the Morning Class. I learned time management, budgeting, finance, how to be successful in college, how to be accountable for my time.”

Susso and his students are bound together for life, which is why so many remain in contact long after graduation. Six years post-high school, Boye still considers Susso a trusted mentor.

“It is mandatory for me, at least once or twice a month, to call him, keep him updated about my life, what I’m thinking of doing,” she said. “He gives me advice … and when I’m stressed and need to release, I just call him. I keep in touch because of the comfort. With all of his experience, he has a lot to bring to his students.”

Boye still makes vision boards for herself and shares them with him when she’s done. And Susso has helped her in other ways, too, she said: As the only girl in her family, Boye was accustomed to soaking up everyone’s attention, a tendency that made her a less than ideal classmate. Susso noticed this and found a way to reset her thinking, she said. 

“He really helped me understand people,” Boye said. “When I was in high school, he printed out a book for me: We went through it for hours, talking about it. Slowly, he started molding me into a better person to interact with my classmates. To this day, when he reads a good book and he likes it, he’ll share it with me.”

Susso wants his students to collaborate with their peers and help others — the Morning Class also has a community service component where students have volunteered at area homeless shelters and raised money for cancer research. But he also desires for these young people to discover their own agency and capacity to be leaders.

“At some point in life, whether you’re a parent, a teacher, a boss at some organization, the president of a country,” he tells his students, “ you will be either a manager — managing every little thing people are doing, including your children — or you become a leader, in which you develop the skill of influence.”

In addition to offering life lessons inside the school, Susso has helped untangle misunderstandings at home. In one instance, a family was worried that their teenage daughter’s new job would jeopardize their food stamps. The girl, one of Susso’s students, enjoyed the responsibility and the money that came with it: She was heartsick when her mother pressured her to quit. 

“After school, I went to the house to speak to the mom, and … at the end of the conversation, she had a better understanding,” he said. “Her daughter was not making enough for the family to no longer qualify for aid.”

That same student is now a Ph.D. candidate at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, conducting research on bone marrow treatment. 

‘I know there are no accidents’

Two weeks before Susso’s high school graduation, he learned his grandmother, who had raised him and his siblings, had no place to live after her roof collapsed. 

Though he was slated to begin community college in the fall, he put that dream on hold to pick up a second full-time grocery store job: For six years, he worked 4 p.m. to midnight at one location and midnight to 8 a.m. at another.

The schedule was grueling but allowed him enough money to build a house for both his grandmother and his mother. Finally, with that mission complete, he enrolled in college in 2008 when he was 23 years old. But that summer brought new tragedy: His 19-year-old sister contracted Hepatitis B and needed to come to the United States for treatment. 

But the only way she’d be granted a visa was if the family could secure $25,000 toward her medical care. The situation seemed hopeless until one of Susso’s managers at Stop & Shop — he came from modest means but worked hard and saved money over the course of many years — offered to help. 

“To my surprise, he said, ‘I’ll bring you the money tomorrow because there should never be a price tag on a human life,’” Susso recalled.

Ultimately, his sister’s visa application was denied and she succumbed four months later. Eight hours after her passing, Susso’s grandmother died of a heart attack. 

The young man was devastated by both losses, but also motivated to help those who found themselves similarly stranded.

“Looking back now, I know there are no accidents,” he said. “This was my first year of college. I stopped all of my classes to be back home with my family. And then when I got back to the U.S., it became clear what I wanted to study: I wanted to become an immigration lawyer.”

Susso earned a bachelor’s degree in political science and history from the University of Vermont and took his law school entrance exam, but a trusted advisor steered him in another direction. By the time he would defend immigrant kids in the courtroom, they’d be headed to jail or targeted for deportation, the advisor said. Perhaps, she suggested, there was another way to empower these children.

Susso considered her advice and reflected on the wisdom of Nelson Madela, who once called education “the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” 

Suddenly, a new plan revealed itself: Susso would become a teacher.

“My mission was clear: When these kids graduate, they have avenues to have a better quality of life that they mightn’t have otherwise,” he said.

A worthwhile journey

Susso’s students have already been accepted to numerous area colleges this year, with many aspiring to transfer to bigger-name schools once they master English. It’s what they hope will help build their legacy, a frequent topic in Susso’s Morning Class.

Some of his students arrived in the United States on their own. Others flew across the globe with a single, similarly aged sibling, reuniting with a mother or father whom they hadn’t seen in years.

Anarosa Encarnacion, the senior who was grappling wih her college essay, has already felt the sting of xenophobia in her new home, most notably when a man told her and her family as they dined in a restaurant that they should speak English. “I just stayed quiet,” said the teen, who came to the U.S. from the Dominican Republic.

Susso uses these instances as teachable moments, giving his students tools to navigate such painful interactions.

“One of the things we discuss is that the way people treat you has more to do with them than you,” he said. “Other people’s reaction to you is really not your issue.” 

Principal Cabarcas said many of the students Susso worked with would have dropped out or taken far longer to graduate without his intervention, including the chance to attend his Morning Class.

“It was relevant and meaningful,” Cabarcas said. “Students could put that knowledge to use right away. They really saw how it would affect them — both in the moment and in the future.”

She’s thrilled that the widely recognized social studies teacher has chosen to remain on staff, to make the two-hour commute each way to teach at her school and return to the community that needs him.

Susso has had many other job offers and could easily teach closer to home: The father of three still lives in Poughkeepsie because it’s near his wife’s workplace. But no school or neighborhood would have as high a population of newcomer students as his, he said. 

“Why do I commute four hours a day to teach them?” he asked. “It is a journey that is well worth it.”

Disclosure: The Walton Family Foundation provides financial support to both the Weave Project and ����Ӱ��.

Lead Image: Alhassan Susso stands with a group of his students in front of a mural outside International Community High School in the South Bronx. Left to Right: Alhassan Susso, Adama Bah, Habi Kane, Amy Samb and Anarosa Encarnacion. (Jo Napolitano)

Recommendations include ways schools can reduce carbon emissions, utilize infrastructure as a teaching tool, support communities of color disproportionately affected by weather crises and create pathways for students to pursue green jobs.

“Ultimately, there are a lot of technical fixes that we need in addressing climate change. But we will need people to actually advance a sustainable society,” said Laura Schifter, senior fellow with the Aspen Institute and founder of the new initiative, .

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Synthesizing a year of listening tours and research, the connects one of the country’s most sizable public sectors to actionable climate solutions — like warming effects by replacing the nation’s largest diesel fleet with electric school buses and swapping the common asphalt plots that surround schools with green spaces.

Organized by federal, state and local impact, all recommendations detail what partnerships can and do look like with business, philanthropy, media and advocacy organizations across the country.

In comparison with private homes, public safety offices and businesses, , according to the New Buildings Institute, a nonprofit that tracks and helps to redesign commercial spaces’ energy performance. Annually, K-12 schools in the U.S. produce emissions equivalent to or roughly 15 million cars. Energy is the second most costly expense for school districts on average.

The K12 Climate Action of students, teachers, education administrators and environmental leaders includes incoming Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez, researcher and president of the Learning Policy Institute and the presidents of the country’s two largest teachers unions, representing roughly 4 million educators combined. The group is co-led by Republican Christine Todd Whitman, former New Jersey governor and head of the Environmental Protection Agency under President George W. Bush, and Democrat John King, former U.S. secretary of education under President Obama who is now running for Maryland governor.

With the action plan now live, the commission is coalition building with districts and businesses nationwide. Their focus is educating more leaders about how small and large school infrastructure changes or partnerships can support a cleaner environment, so that they’re able to follow through on recommendations.

“All the things that we’re calling for are achievable. There’s someplace somewhere that is doing each of the things we recommend,” King told ����Ӱ��.

Some suggested changes, like improving air quality for students, are highly anticipated by parents and already underway in efforts to ameliorate pandemic health concerns. Beginning next year, more than 500 schools across New York state will further improve air quality, reduce emissions and add energy career and tech opportunities under Gov. Kathy Hochul’s just-announced $59 million . New York officials are partnering with the New Buildings Institute on the effort.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers who sometimes clashed with King in her role as a labor leader, told ����Ӱ�� that the union “leaped” at the opportunity to be involved in K12 Climate Action, seeing it as part of the AFT’s broader goal to make schools safe and healthy spaces for learning.

“The way you teach people is by not telling them, but having them see, feel, touch, use whatever senses they have to really envision a future,” she said.

Weingarten and other commission leaders toured Alice West Fleet Elementary School in Arlington, Virginia Sept. 21 to learn how a small school has become a model of sustainability for the affluent, D.C. area county. The school’s geothermal heating system and solar panels save roughly $100,000 in energy costs each year, enough to fund two teachers’ starting salaries, according to the Aspen Institute’s Laura Schifter.

In the center of Alice West Fleet, the red and blue lights of a “solar pole” show students how much energy is being produced and used at any given moment. Any surplus goes to greater Arlington County, and upper grade students use data collected to make comparisons and predictions about how much energy will be produced at different points in the year.

On the first floor is the yet-to-be-named “Power Pole,” showing students the amount of power the school has generated. The blue is from the solar panels, the red is the power being used. Extra power goes back to the county.

— AFT (@AFTunion)

Weingarten, whose enthusiasm was evident during the tour when she slid down a slide that connects Fleet’s third and second floors, added that the AFT recently established a climate task force, including members from states heavily dependent on the fossil fuel industry, like Texas, West Virginia and Alaska. The growing urgency to address climate needs across political parties and geography gives her hope that what unites us is greater than what divides us.

“Just like our responsibility to educate kids, there’s a responsibility to keep a climate that’s going to be there,” Weingarten said.

Commission member Nikki Pitre, executive director for the told ����Ӱ�� that there’s also a responsibility to keep Indigenous people and values at the forefront of climate solutions, given that Native peoples have always stewarded the land and acted as environmentalists.

The action plan emphasizes that Indigenous communities’ knowledge systems — their local culture and ecological practices — must be included in climate solutions.

Pitre said she walked away from the tour of Alice Fleet questioning, “What do we need to advocate for in our policies to ensure that these schools are not the exception? That we’re providing equal access across the country — including tribal reservations, including urban spaces?”

School leaders on the commission say that equity considerations play a key part in deciding which sustainable infrastructure improvements are prioritized because solutions cannot be one-size-fit-all. For some districts, climate issues are just as urgent as addressing unfinished learning and mental health concerns related to the pandemic as families face unprecedented flooding in the South and upper Atlantic.

As Los Angeles County’s superintendent of schools, Debra Duardo leads the that constitute the nation’s largest K-12 consolidated school system. She told ����Ӱ�� she hesitated when first approached by the commission, given all the urgent challenges facing students during the pandemic.

“I hadn’t really placed as much of an emphasis on my own time and knowledge on understanding the impact that the education sector has on the environment. For me it was like, we’re super busy right now, but one thing this pandemic has taught us is that schools have to be ready to step up — that people look to schools as the hub of support and resources and communities,” Duardo said.

In Los Angeles, where families increasingly face poor air quality from smog and fire smoke, she said, it’s historically been student and environmental activists leading the charge for climate solutions. However busy leaders might be, she said, they cannot ignore the dread young people feel when confronting climate change and the strains it may place on their learning.

“There’s so much evidence and research that tells us that children thrive when they’re in an environment where it’s safe, beautiful and accommodating to meet their needs …Children aren’t going to learn and thrive in an environment if they don’t feel like anybody is listening, or they’re concerned that their futures, their safety are in danger.”

Advocates and teachers say presents a way to confront some eco-anxiety with positive actions and possibilities for future careers in engineering, green infrastructure and clean energy. K12 Climate Action commissioners contend that infrastructure changes are reducing emissions while preparing the next generation of stewards.

Sustainable changes also open the door for deeper civic and family engagement at a time when the pandemic has strained relationships to schools. As a part of a larger research assignment on the Chesapeake Bay, Ashley Snyder’s fourth-grade students at Alice West Fleet started brainstorming ways to share with the community how best to enhance rain gardens and filtration systems to protect the watershed area.

“I definitely see the students bringing home a lot more of what they’re learning to their families,” she said.