Climate change impacts have potentially big repercussions for kids’ education

In the spring of 2022, the Calf Canyon/Hermit’s Creek fire burned over 300,000 acres in New Mexico, including terrain near the Rio Gallinas School for Ecology and the Arts in Las Vegas, New Mexico. “If you were in the parking lot, you could see all this smoke coming up,” says the school’s director, Aja Currey. Las Vegas, New Mexico is a rural community—vastly different from its Nevada namesake—and children aged 5 to 14 travel from around the region to attend the school. Some students and staff evacuated from areas that burned and wondered if they’d have a home to come back to. Classes were in session for about two of the three months the fire raged, and children showed up when they could. But Currey estimates that around a quarter of the student body was absent at any given time. More recently, fires around Los Angeles have caused over half a million students to miss school.

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