It’s been three months since the Eaton Fire tore across Altadena and surrounding communities, destroying several of the schools David Spiro serves and many of the homes of families who attended them.

“Frankly, the whole community has been traumatized,” said Spiro, the director of development at the Pasadena Educational Foundation, which works with the local school district to meet the educational, health, and related needs of students and families.

Spiro, who lost his own home in the blaze, said many families who have been fighting to meet the most immediate needs – safe housing, food, medical care – are only beginning to think about confronting the mental health or educational impacts of the Eaton Fire.

He – along with supporters of schools across Los Angeles County – expects the need for mental health services and educational support to rise significantly in the coming months.

“Things are very different here,” he explained. “You can feel the stress. Every time you look at the scorched mountains, it affects you.”

Erica Villalpando and Lara Choulakia, both licensed clinical social workers for Pasadena Unified School District, said meeting students’ mental health needs was already challenging.

“Especially post-Covid, we’ve been at capacity from the beginning of the school year,” even with several practitioners on staff, Choulakia said.

Offering mental health support services through the school has been key since the Eaton Fire, Villalpando said. Parents may need “a short psychoeducation session” to know how to support a child who keeps drawing the flames again and again. A child who wants to tell and retell the story of his family’s evacuation needs an attentive, empathic therapist.

A local approach

Across Los Angeles County, schools and school districts are working to meet the mental health and educational needs of families affected by the January wildfires.

Children and families across the county have experienced trauma and immense stress. Many have lost their homes and schools, and many are still struggling to secure housing, nutritious food, and other necessities. Students are at risk for learning loss and other serious impacts to their education, which can further harm mental and physical health.

The county’s three education foundations, working closely with school districts, are funding school grants and developing programs to respond to these urgent needs. Through their support, local school districts are able to hire crisis counselors to care for students and families over the coming months; students at schools across the county will participate in summer enrichment programs; and teachers will set up “calm corners” and purchase books and toys that teach social-emotional skills.

Direct Relief is supporting the Greater Los Angeles Education Foundation, the Pasadena Educational Foundation, and the L.A. Unified School District Education Foundation – three organizations that work closely together – with grants of $500,000 each, totaling $1.5 million in funding, for their work responding to the L.A. County fires.

“When you’re displaced, that’s all gone”

Education and health outcomes are deeply intertwined, a relationship that’s been studied closely in Los Angeles in particular. Higher levels of education are associated with lower levels of chronic disease, better mental health, and other markers of well-being. The relationship works the other way around, too: Health concerns as diverse as depression, asthma, and poor nutrition cause students to miss school and can interfere with learning.

Kerry Franco, president at the Greater L.A. Education Foundation, said that this intersection between health and education has long been a priority for organizations like hers.

“A healthy, well-adjusted child is going to give their best and really thrive academically,” she explained.

GLAEF embraces a Community Schools Model, where school sites serve as hubs for community resources, offering everything from onsite mental health care to connections to outside social services. The goal is to be “so tuned in with the students and families that there is real-time engagement and support,” Franco said.

The Covid-19 pandemic and its aftermath have taken a severe toll on students’ mental health, which was already a growing area of concern, Franco explained. Many families were already confronting food and housing insecurity, and suicidal ideation and other symptoms of urgent mental health needs were on the rise. “The long-term impact [of Covid-19] hasn’t even been written yet,” she said.

The effects of the January wildfires on an already high level of need are hard to even fathom. A sense that “‘I’ve lost my school, I’ve lost my home, I’ve lost my community’ is difficult for the savviest adult in the world,” Franco observed.

Her foundation’s priority now is, as much as possible, to prevent further impacts to students and families, and enable their long-term recovery.

The Direct Relief grant funding will be used to provide counseling services to students and staff – many of whom were also deeply affected by the fires, are experiencing their own trauma, and still struggle to secure necessities like stable housing. Micro-grants will fund teacher-led projects to equip classrooms with necessary resources and new programs.

L.A. County schools will also use the money to develop climate resilience and sustainability plans, knowing that wildfires will continue to be a threat to their communities. And finally, enrichment programs after school and over the summer will prevent learning loss and provide a sense of community.

Community plays an indispensable role for many families across greater L.A., Franco said. “When you’re displaced, that’s all gone,” she said. “We’re going to make sure that kids, wherever they are, have that support, that they feel safe in their physical environment, their family is engaged.”

“A peak comes at six months”

Before the wildfires, Spiro was proud of an instructional garden program that taught students at Pasadena Unified schools how to grow produce and “have a different relationship with the earth.” Many of the district’s students lived in food deserts with little access to fresh foods, he explained. Educators wanted kids to learn that “good food comes from the ground.”

Now, Spiro said, the program is indefinitely on hold: “They can’t eat anything that was grown in any of the soil.”

It’s just a small example of the enormous impact the wildfires have had on the district’s students, families, and staff.

Pasadena Unified has been helping families connect to services supporting the most immediate needs, such as food and housing. Direct aid has been distributed to families and staff to help them secure housing and other essentials. In addition, Spiro said, the district and education foundation are both highly aware that measures to support mental health and prevent learning loss will need to grow rapidly in the coming months.

Community representatives in Colorado, where massive fires have destroyed hundreds of thousands of acres in recent years, reached out to the Pasadena Education Foundation to offer their perspective, which Spiro summarized: “‘Your long-term need is going to be the students, the families, and your own mental health. Don’t give all the money you’re receiving just yet; hold some back to address the long-term mental health needs.’ They said a peak comes at six months.”

Mental health practitioners have reported that the number of threat assessments they conduct each week – a process that occurs when a child reports a desire to harm themselves or others – has increased. Students are expressing elevated levels of sadness, stomach pain, anxiety, and other symptoms of emotional distress.

Spiro said many staff members, like him, lost their homes, and many need trauma-informed mental health services so they can continue their own work.

The funding from Direct Relief will allow the school district’s mental health services department to hire two full-time crisis counselors to support staff, students, and families. In addition, the grant will help fund the district’s Summer Enrichment Program, which will enroll more than 1,000 children this year.

“It’s a fun, supportive learning program,” Spiro said. “We wanted to make sure everybody had the opportunity to send their kids to our program, and the cost would not be a barrier.”

While kids are participating, parents can have some time to breathe and search for housing and other needs. Spiro, currently living in a 400-square-foot vacation rental, can empathize with families crowded uncomfortably into temporary, too-small housing:

“I cannot imagine what that is like with children,” he said.

“People are calling, asking for help”

Responding to the wildfires requires a hyper-local response, said Sara Mooney, interim executive director at the LAUSD Education Foundation. While schools across the district were affected, a school that’s completely burned down has different needs from a school that’s opened its doors to displaced students.

“We really rely on the content experts of our school district,” Mooney said.

For LAUSD schools, Mooney explained, “joy and wellness” need to be as important as academics: “You can’t teach a child unless you touch their heart.”

LAUSD Education Foundation will use grant funding from Direct Relief to provide fully funded mental health support to local families. The district’s mental health team is working closely with community partners to place people experiencing mental health symptoms with a local counselor.

While the district is conducting outreach to let families know this support is on offer, Mooney said it’s often not necessary. “People are calling, asking for help,” she said.

The funding will also go to support mini-grants for teachers and schools, covering the cost of bibliotherapy, social-emotional learning tools, “calming corners” where students can retreat when they feel overwhelmed or distressed, and other support measures.

“We want to help kids handle their emotions in a healthy way,” Mooney explained.

A number of the grants will also provide support, such as an upcoming wellness retreat, to faculty and staff.

“All staff in that area were first responders,” Mooney said. “They were evacuating kids onto buses while the fire bore down.”