After Schools Burn, What Happens to Black Students?

By& Quintessa Williams | Word In Black(WIB) – When Inez Moore’s father called her after a long day, she couldn’t believe what she had just heard: “We lost the house.” Thirty years of family memories were “gone in an instant,” says Moore, a professor in the College of Education at Cal State, Fullerton.Both the Eaton Fire that destroyed large swaths of Altadena&— a historically Black community in Los Angeles’ northeast suburbs — and the Palisades Fire, which razed the Pacific Palisades neighborhood on the westside of L.A., impacted Moore’s family.The Eaton Fire destroyed Moore’s childhood home in Altadena. The Palisades fire burned Pacific Palisades Charter High School, the high school she was bussed nearly 40 miles away to attend. “This didn’t just hit the woods or the mountains — it reached our neighborhoods, impacting our lives and our schools,” she says. At least 10 schools across the Los Angeles Unified School District and the Pasadena Unified School District, serving Altadena, have been severely damaged or destroyed. PUSD has been closed since Jan. 8. Schools in LAUSD and other area districts are temporarily closed due to evacuation orders and the poor air quality caused by toxic smoke and ash.The reality is...