Los Angeles

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/35531504

Klein had already been talking with EdTrust, a nonprofit dedicated to removing racial and economic barriers to education, about developing a more detailed national map to illustrate all the ways extreme weather disrupts learning. Then the L.A. wildfires broke out in early January...

More than 750,000 kids went to more than 1,000 schools that were closed for as few as two days or more than 10 days in January, they found.

“Three out of four kids impacted by the Los Angeles wildfires are socioeconomically disadvantaged,” Klein said. “Two out of five kids impacted by the wildfires are multilingual learners and one out of 10 is a student with disabilities.”

The report is not peer-reviewed and makes no claim to being comprehensive, Klein said. But it’s important to compile statistics like this, he said, because some students have specific needs that are seriously affected by the interruption to classroom learning. They need to return to learning and a stable school setting most urgently, he said.

Schools provide nutrition and a stable environment for students from households where they may not have enough to eat, live in overcrowded or unsafe housing conditions, or lack adequate adult supervision.

Studies show that school closures and chronic absenteeism caused by extreme weather events have an outsize detrimental effect on kids’ academic success. Missing one week of school from extreme weather-related school closures is the equivalent to missing two to three weeks from some other kind of absence or school closure, Klein said.

A 2023 peer-reviewed study in the journal Economics of Education Review found that nearly all students had lower test scores after Hurricane Florence triggered closures in North Carolina elementary and middle schools in 2018.

A recent survey from Stanford University’s Center on Early Childhood found that one in two California parents with young children worry about how wildfires, drought, flooding, and extreme heat affect their kids.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/35424526

Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom has once again revealed his true allegiance—not to working people, nor to environmental protection, but to corporate interests.

His latest executive order, which suspends California’s landmark environmental regulations to fast-track utility infrastructure rebuilding in wildfire-affected areas, is a direct attack on democracy, environmental safeguards and working class communities. It is a measure that aligns perfectly with the interests of private energy corporations like Southern California Edison (SCE) while dangerously mirroring the authoritarian methods of the fascistic Trump administration.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/23750069

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/27481391

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/35401044

In a unanimous vote last Tuesday, the Los Angeles City Council has taken a decisive step toward dismantling the LA Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) and shifting control of hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to private homeless service providers.

The council’s decision follows two scathing audits that exposed failures in LAHSA’s financial oversight, but the true significance of this move extends far beyond the agency’s mismanagement. At its core, this is not about fixing homelessness; it is about turning the crisis into a lucrative business opportunity for the private sector.

Councilmember Monica Rodriguez, who spearheaded the effort, branded LAHSA a “monstrosity,” citing delayed provider payments and failures to track spending. Yet, rather than addressing the deeper systemic failures of the city’s (and, in fact, the state’s) approach to homelessness, the council is using LAHSA’s dysfunction as a pretext to accelerate the privatization of services. This is not a genuine effort to improve conditions for the nearly 50,000 unhoused individuals in Los Angeles, it is a deliberate strategy to carve up public funding and distribute it among politically connected private contractors.

In response to increasingly dangerous wildfires in the Western United States, Washington State's Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has pioneered an "all hands, all lands" wildfire prevention strategy. Launched in 2017, the 20-year forest health strategic plan focuses on restoring forests, fostering community fire resilience, and bolstering firefighting resources. By using forest science and fire risk modeling, the DNR assesses and treats high-risk areas through thinning and prescribed burns, and creates fire breaks. This program is funded by a 2021 state bill that earmarked $125 million per biennium for wildfire mitigation.

The strategy involves extensive collaboration with private landowners, tribes, and the federal government. Since 2017, almost 900,000 acres of forest have been treated, yielding positive results, such as during the 2021 Schneider Springs fire where treated areas survived. The DNR also emphasizes community resilience by creating fire breaks and supporting home hardening efforts. The state has increased its full-time firefighters and air firefighting resources and uses technologies like drones and predictive fire risk modeling. Revenue from forest treatments supports the restoration work, benefiting local economies. While acknowledging the ongoing threat of wildfires, Commissioner Upthegrove stresses the need for continued commitment to saving lives and homes through proactive strategies.