Across California, school leaders are increasingly confronting the impacts of climate and environmental conditions on their campuses. California’s TK-12 schools sit at the epicenter of two converging realities: outdated school facilities and accelerating environmental and climate challenges.

Climate hazards — extreme heat, wildfire smoke, severe storms, and flooding — are increasingly disrupting learning, harming student health, and straining school facilities. These impacts have already begun to show up in student attendance, cognition, and learning outcomes. At the same time, most school buildings are outdated and environmentally unsustainable, contributing to environmental burdens and failing to provide equitable access to safe and healthy spaces for students and educators to learn, play, and work.

Ten Strands, a nonprofit organization focused on advancing environmental and climate literacy and action in California’s TK-12 schools, has developed a statewide equity data set showing that these risks are not evenly distributed. Schools in low-income and historically overburdened communities often face the highest levels of climate vulnerability while having the least access to sustainability-supporting infrastructure. A 2023 report, A Call to Action: Climate-Resilient California Schools, found that many of these campuses lack modern ventilation, filtration, shading, and weatherization. As a result, many schools face a form of “double exposure”: deteriorating school environments combined with increasing climate hazards.

Much of the problem stems from aging facilities and decades of underinvestment. Nearly 40 percent of California school buildings were constructed before modern standards for energy efficiency, ventilation, or thermal comfort. Deferred maintenance and lack of investment have left many districts with failing HVAC systems, deteriorating infrastructure, limited shade, and asphalt-dominated schoolyards that intensify heat and runoff. Many campuses also lack the systems needed for long-term sustainability and resilience, including water management infrastructure, waste reduction programs, transportation electrification, and energy resilience systems.

These gaps leave schools environmentally inefficient and physically unprepared for climate stresses. This is especially concerning because schools serve children, one of the populations most vulnerable to environmental harm.

Although the TK–12 education sector remains far behind other public sectors in climate adaptation and decarbonization, it also holds extraordinary potential. Schools are California’s single largest public infrastructure system and a trusted hub for nearly 6 million children and their families. Recent data also show that school boards across California are increasingly adopting sustainability and climate resolutions. The state Legislature has also advanced policies related to energy efficiency, renewable energy, zero-emission transportation, water conservation, and climate education. These actions signal growing recognition that schools must be part of California’s broader climate strategy.

Still, schools face three major barriers to change: insufficient and unpredictable funding, limited staff capacity for sustainability and climate resilient facilities work, and fragmented guidance across state agencies. Without coordinated guidance, capacity, and investment, districts cannot translate that vision into the safe, resilient learning environments students deserve.

With the right investment, guidance, and partnerships, California’s schools can become models of sustainability, resilient community anchors, and powerful engines for climate literacy and student empowerment. Systems-level change is needed to accelerate progress, and ACSA leaders can play an important role in helping California move from vision to action.

What’s needed now: Moving from policy to action California has a clear vision for healthy, sustainable, climate-ready schools, and strong examples across the state demonstrate what is possible. The path forward requires four system-level shifts to support implementation and scale progress across California schools:

1. Aligned, multi-agency state guidance: Districts need consistent, coordinated direction across state agencies for school facilities (e.g. CDE, OPSC, DSA) and state agencies for environmental and climate goals (e.g. CEC, CARB, ICARP, Natural Resources, etc.) so they are not left navigating conflicting rules or guessing how to design climate-ready facilities. A unified statewide framework would clarify standards and pathways for climate-ready facilities.

2. Sustained, predictable investment: Long-term, reliable funding is essential to address decades of deferred maintenance, and advance decarbonization, indoor air improvements, green schoolyards, water systems, and energy resilience. Districts need steady capital and operational resources to plan and implement effectively.

3. Regional infrastructure for implementation support: Districts cannot advance complex sustainability and resilience projects without technical assistance. A statewide network of regional support would provide the local expertise, training, and coordination needed to help school districts turn plans into projects.

4. District-level structures and data systems: Local leadership must be strengthened through sustainability staffing, cross-department teams, climate action plans, and data systems that track progress and equity. Districts that build internal capacity consistently implement improvements more effectively and more equitably.

Call to action for ACSA leaders Climate change is already shaping the daily experience of California students. How California’s education system responds in the coming years will shape the safety, health, and learning conditions of an entire generation.

State and local education leaders must work in partnership to build the aligned systems, investments, and supports that districts need to take action.

ACSA leaders are uniquely positioned to champion coordinated guidance, advocate for sustained funding, strengthen regional and local capacity, and help ensure that every district has the tools to deliver safe, healthy, climate-ready learning environments. By partnering in this movement, ACSA leaders can help turn vision into action — and ensure that every California student learns in a resilient school prepared for the climate future.

Andra Yeghoian is the chief innovation officer at Ten Strands.