California schools and students are facing a long road to recovery as wildfires in the Los Angeles area damage dozens of school buildings and take hundreds of thousands of children out of the classroom.

Administrators have a myriad of issues ahead of them, including trauma for staff and students who have lost their homes or loved ones, destroyed facilities and lingering poor air quality.

Experts are imploring schools to be ready with mental health resources and to quickly get plans into place that will restore learning environments without more disruption to students’ lives.

“When trauma like this occurs, it will take a significant amount of work to put kids and teachers in the best place to support learning again,” said Laura Schifter, head of This is Planet Ed at the Aspen Institute.

More than 300 schools were shut down after the fires started over a week ago, including the entire Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), the second-largest school district in the country, serving more than 500,000 students.

“Whether it's kids who have been evacuated and are displaced from their homes permanently because they've lost their homes, or whether it's the fact that maybe their house is still standing, but everything around their home is gone, or their school is gone, that's a significant amount of........

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