- Coming up on Inside California the Los Angeles wildfires destroyed or damaged at least nine schools, changing those communities forever.

Hear how one school lost in the fire has prioritized students' wellbeing.

During challenging times, - They lost everything.

They lost their childhood memories, but they felt safe because they had that structure of coming back to a classroom.

- In Santa Cruz County, meet students who are part of a countywide effort to improve their leadership skills.

It's called the Youth Led Leadership Alliance and it's empowering students of diverse backgrounds to make change the way they want to.

- There's amazing individuals on the team that give you these tools to make real change as a really young person.

- Plus, go inside a mobile art education center that brings the museum experience to students in Sacramento.

It's called the Art Ark.

It it's served generations of students since its launch in 1980 and discover how San Diego Miramar College is addressing the aviation industry's labor shortage.

Its program trains the next generation of pilots, aircraft mechanics, and business leaders.

It's all coming up next on Inside California Education.

- Funding for Inside California made possible by - The California lottery is turning 40, and together with players, retail partners and our staff, we're celebrating decades of raising extra money for public education.

More than $46 billion in four decades of having fun.

Thank you.

From the California lottery, - Imagine a credit union where school employees are treated like the heroes you are.

At Schools First Federal Credit Union.

Everything we do starts with helping school employees and their families live better today and plan for tomorrow.

Learn more at schoolsfirstfcu.org.

- The Stuart Foundation improving life outcomes for young people through education.

CollegeBoard, helping all students own their future.

Additional funding for Inside California Education is made possible by these organizations supporting public education.

♪♪♪ - We had just came back from winter break.

It was Tuesday.

We had just came back from recess.

So now we have - So now we have to figure out if it's true or false.

Read thestatement.

If N is a factor of a hundred, - If N is a factor of a hundred, then N is also a factor of 50.

- So we are sitting in school doing math.

- Is that true or false?

True.

Okay.

- True.

- Okay.

- I was in a meeting early in the morning and I kept paying attention to the wind and I kept walking outside and thinking, this is very strange.

I thought these winds are pretty intense.

And around 10:45, one of my staff members said, “you should come look at something with me.” We walked out onto the yard and I saw black billowy smoke and I could see flames - And somebody looks out and goes, wow, there's a lot of smoke above us.

And we all crowded around the window and then we see flames from the mountain.

- I try to keep as calm as possible.

- Was it the rover that they sent over there?

- [Kid] Yeah - Okay, that's good.

I just told my kids, oh, don't worry about it.

You know, first responders are gonna take care of it.

And we never thought it was gonna reach to this extent, you know, like a disaster.

- We kind of thought that it's just like stay up in the mountains.

But when it started to creep down, it was crazy.

- And then I ran back to my office to call my operations people to say, I see flames, I see fire.

They said, do you feel like your campus needs to be relocated?

And in my mind I thought I might be overreacting, but I said yes.

They said, we're gonna send some buses.

Go ahead and let parents know that if they would like to pick up their children, they can.

So parents started coming and picking up their kids.

- My mom was rushing me back to my house and we grabbed as much stuff as we could stuffed in the car, and my dad got home and we all just drove and there was insane traffic getting out of the area.

It was really apocalyptic and just crazy.

- That process of parents picking up kids happened pretty organically and very quickly, I would say less than an hour.

And I had almost every student picked up - And we're like, all right, the buses are here.

We're taking whoever's left.

When we came here at Brentwood Elementary, - It was decided that Brentwood Science Magnet in Brentwood, California was their evacuation point.

So I learned about our school burning on social media.

- We're looking at Palisades Charter Elementary School Right now - We're talking about 75% of the school was lost.

The first thing that went through my mind is I don't know how to be the principal of a school that has burned down.

I don't know how to do that.

I have no idea how to do that.

I don't even know where to begin.

That was mostly my thinking.

And then understanding the complete and utter devastation that it wasn't just my school, it was the whole community.

- LAUSD is the second largest school district in the country and home to several schools that were destroyed in the wildfires.

- It's like a war zone.

Their community is going to look very different.

- Everything was lost.

- I couldn't believe it that our, our whole community was gone.

- More than 700 elementary school students had to be moved.

After two elementary campuses burned down a lot of the students, more than 400 of them coming here - On Friday.

At the end of that first week, it was decided that Palisades Charter Elementary would move to be co-located on the Brentwood Science Magnet campus.

- Brentwood Elementary is one of those campuses that there is enough room to welcome the students.

This will be their new school home for the foreseeable future.

- I was not in this alone.

Los Angeles Unified School district has shown up in a way that I am just amazed and impressed.

I couldn't have done any of it without the support from the district.

- [ Man ] Welcome back.

Welcome back guys.

- [Anchor ] Students whose schools have been destroyed by the Palisades Fire have arrived at their temporary learning facilities this morning.

- They've gone through a lot.

So counseling support, psychological support have been a priority.

[ Soft guitar ] - Most of the first month was a lot of social emotional learning where they're able to share how they feel and what's going on.

Most of my students did lose their homes.

They lost everything.

They lost their childhood memories, but they felt safe because they had that structure coming back to a classroom they were used to.

And I feel like school is the only thing that's back to normal for them right now.

- Jake, what are you doing right there?

- I'm making a UFO to put the climate in here.

- I think at the end of the day, they just wanted to see their friends back and you know, because they all share that same experience.

- My worst fear when the fire happened was that the community would be dispersed.

But the fact that we are all back together and that we like still see the people from our community is really, really great.

That's what matters most to me.

- The answer.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.. - I think it's just appreciating the small moments, you know, like appreciating life and every day you never know when you're gonna lose everything.

And I think that's something that as a community we've learned, just being grateful.

- I'm just gonna say resiliency.

How to recover.

The world throws things at us that we have absolutely no control of.

And how do we rise from the ashes?

- The Los Angeles Unified School district has approved a plan to rebuild Palisades Charter Elementary, along with two other public schools destroyed by the Palisades Fire.

The $604 million plan calls for the schools to be rebuilt by the end of 2028.

[ Upbeat Music ] - Student Voice, I believe is one of the fundamental reasons why schools exist.

We want to amplify those voices.

We want to give students those opportunities to be able to be problem solvers - In Santa Cruz County, a move to amplify student voices began in 2020.

That's when the County Office of Education established the Youth-Led Leadership Alliance or YLLA.

Its goal: unit teens across multiple schools for projects that matter to them.

- Youth Led Leadership Alliance really is, is about helping students develop the skills to be able to influence and impact their schools, their neighborhoods, their communities.

- I've definitely grown as a public speaker in the last few years gaining an appreciation for working with others.

- Ruben is part of the multilingual youth Taking Action, one of seven groups in the alliance that brings together young people with shared interests.

The groups focus on topics such as the environment, art, mental health and technology.

There's also a Black Student Uni [ speaking in spanish ] - Students in the Alliance often participate in a culminating activity, which invites the community to see their work.

At Soquel High School, five miles east of Santa Cruz, multilingual youth taking action has gathered families and friends for a world languages showcase to celebrate diverse languages and cultures.

Valeria and Ruben are MCing tonight elevating student voices while refining their own - At times in the past and kind of now people have been silenced for speaking other languages.

So this is like an opportunity to be able to do that proudly.

I have the opportunity to not only practice my Spanish speaking skills in public, but I also get to do it like at a larger audience since it is countywide.

- I grew up speaking as well as English.

I spoke French and Spanish, so language has always been a really important part of my identity.

I hope this showcase inspires people to really understand the power that learning languages and appreciating world languages has.

- We're a relatively small county.

We have been wanting to create more opportunities for students, especially students who come from families that live in poverty, students who are language learners, immigrant students.

We wanted to make sure that those students have opportunities to be able to participate and develop that sense of belonging.

- Organizers say that sense of belonging is at the core of how the alliance is structured.

Unlike many school clubs, students in YLLA groups share their leadership positions.

- One of our philosophies is distributive leadership, and which means that we have rotations for different students who are participating in in different projects.

They actually have to determine who's responsible for what.

- Another group in the alliance, the Queer Student Union tackles the challenges facing lgbtq plus youth.

They also foster safe and inclusive spaces at Santa Cruz County schools.

- I look forward to collaborating with anyone that I can and building connections.

- They've traveled to the state's capitol for advocacy day, an opportunity to hone their leadership skills and advocate for the dignity of the queer community.

Members, Sloane and Alex are meeting with legislators and their staff about bills that impact queer individuals in California.

Earlier in the day, Alex represented queer youth as the only student speaker at a press conference of about 300 advocates.

- Schools need to protect LGBTQ youth especially right now, and ensure that they don't have to worry about being taunted and bullied in classrooms, bathrooms, and in the halls.

I can't vote so not yet at least.

So being able to make these changes, the only way I know how, being able to advocate for my queer and trans siblings so that they know they're heard and hopefully making change.

So that for me and for the rest of us, it's more accepting in schools - SB 59, I think that this is extremely important, especially for queer youth.

I can make change statewide if I want to with QSU and the ability that it gives me to make real change and it doesn't feel performative at all.

It feels like very real.

- We don't tell the students as part of our work as mentors and supporters.

This is we've, we've decided this is what you need to be focusing on.

It really comes from them.

- Educators in Santa Cruz County believe these types of alliances benefit smaller counties where districts can combine their resources to provide important options and opportunities by and for more students.

- The idea of contributing and taking, taking your identities and things that are important to you and actually sharing them with the community is something very valuable.

- There's amazing individuals on the team that give you these tools to make real change as a really young person - Still ahead on Inside California Education, the aviation industry is facing a severe shortage of workers.

See how San Diego Miramar College is driving the effort to provide affordable aviation education.

But first, take a look inside the Art Ark.

It's a 625 square foot space that provides hands-on art activities for schools in the Sacramento region.

[ Bright bell and piano music ] - Since 1980, we've served more than half a million students throughout the greater Sacramento area.

We hit about 25 to 30 schools a year and engaged in about 13,000 students each year.

- It's called the Crocker Art Museum.

- Most experts agree art education is most impactful when students can have hands-on experiences.

That's the thinking behind Art Ark.

A unique program started 45 years ago by the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento.

Today this 50 foot mobile art museum is visiting Mariemont Elementary School In the San Juan Unified school district.

Organizers say the Art Ark is tailored to meet the needs of every student that enters its doors.

From transitional kindergarten through eighth grade.

- Looking at the benefits of arts education, for instance, study after study shows that it increases creativity.

Students who engage in early arts activities and arts education develop social, motor, socio behavioral skills that last with them for a lifetime.

- When I say the magic word, you can go ahead and get started.

Applesauce - I love the most with playing with the clay.

And I also like it because it's like if I'm having a bad day, I can like write my feelings on a piece of paper and then I can color it in.

- We all know that students need a, a break from their rigorous school days.

They're working so hard, they're reading and doing math.

They're doing so much so we can offer them a break to be creative.

And I think that even just a little break in the day, it can go really far.

- I like it that you can create anything and everything 'cause art can be made out of literally anything can be made outta shapes and you could even draw a scribble and then you could turn it into something cool.

- Simultaneously, there are the teachers who are in there who are observing and who are learning and taking notes and observing ways in which they can incorporate these skills into their classrooms.

It engages on so many different levels.

It's not just the students.

It really is community in action.

- This Art Ark installation is called American Narratives, focusing on multicultural artists, including many from the Sacramento region.

Teachers say the Art Ark changes the way students experience art increasing their engagement and development in other subjects.

- In general, as teachers, we always want to encourage creativity and expression in many different forms.

And so going into the Art Ark, it's easy to connect that with anything that we're learning.

Or it could be connecting things to different cultures.

So like some of the artwork represents different cultures or different types of foods.

And so it was easy to connect the things that we noticed in there with the things that we do in the classroom.

- As many as 175 students a day can pass through the Art Ark while it's set up at a school.

Bringing a firsthand art experience to students who may not otherwise have the opportunity.

- I think part of what's so amazing about it, the Art Ark, is that we're bringing the museum to the students and it's all about access.

It's all about allowing students to experience the joy and wonder of art and arts education and inspiring them to come and visit the museum.

- This gets you and four other members of your family into the museum for free.

- I hope that they see themselves in in the artwork and it gives them some confidence.

So maybe they're noticing patterns in paintings and then they go back to their classroom and their teacher says, well, math is just patterns too.

Or maybe on the Art Ark we say, you know, if a lot of students have a feeling that they can't do art, but if we say, you know, actually art is just a bunch of lines.

And then they go back to their classroom and, and they say, oh, well, lines are also in geometry.

So if I can do this, I can do art.

We hope that it enriches them as a whole child.

- Can we express our gratitude and just say, “Thank you our Art Ark Thank you Miss Brittany on 3 1, 2, 3.

- [students in unison] Thank your work Miss Brittany [ students thanking ] [ uplifting music ] - Art programs in schools often receive less attention compared to core academic subjects like math and science.

That's changing with the passage of Proposition 28.

The proposition requires the state to set aside 1% of education funding a year for K through 12 arts education that amounted to $907 million in the 2024-25 school year.

Districts are required to spend 80% of the funding on hiring new arts and music instructors ♪♪♪ - At San Diego Miramar College, a site that's steeped in aviation history.

Students are starting to take flight aeronautically and academically - There's tons and tons of jobs.

Places like East Coast, Midwest, overseas as well.

- I started realizing like, that is where I want to spend all my time, and I feel like that's what I'm meant to do.

- I really love getting my hands dirty.

It just, the environment I never really experienced I would have - For these students.

A career in aviation is more than just a dream.

It also fills a need.

- There is definitely a pilot shortage and a mechanic shortage in the aviation industry.

Over the last couple decades, there's been a lot of rule changes.

A lot of mechanics and pilots are retiring from the workforce in a convenient time for anybody who's trying to look for that job.

Right now.

Our goal here at Miramar is to have everything they need to for hands-on training, not just classroom training.

- San Diego, Miramar College opened in 1969, but its aviation history stretches all the way back to the 1930s.

Originally a World War I military base, it became a major training ground for both US Marine and Navy pilots.

The Marine Corps air base remains a few miles south of the school.

Active duty members can receive general education from Miramar at the base.

Today, the college offers two FAA approved aviation programs, the Aviation Operations Program, which trains future pilots and business leaders and the Aviation Maintenance Technology Program, which teaches students to become aircraft mechanics.

- A lot of these aviation programs aren't well known and in colleges sometimes they're not the first program people think of for funding and things like that.

- Yeah.

Wes Lundberg is president of Miramar College together with Jerry Buckley, the president of Reedley College, their co-founders of the California Community College Aviation Alliance.

They hope having an alliance will give them more leverage when asking airlines, aerospace companies and other industry partners for resources.

- In the case of our students here, many of them can come here tuition free, but that doesn't account for the cost of FAA testing.

If they're a pilot, they have to have an individual private instructor for the airtime and their tools all come to 15 to $30,000.

That's a lot of money out of pocket.

So we're trying to form more of a structure that allows various industry partners to either contribute equipment, provide personnel support, and or help our students afford get us very costly training.

- Training like spending time on a flight simulator is crucial for aspiring pilots.

Miramar offers at least 15 hours worth of flight simulator experience before students graduate and begin flying real airplanes.

- We have yet to learn aeronautical charts, but what we see up here is a route that you would take later on in the lab.

- On the maintenance side, students are learning how to repair magnetos, a critical part of the engine's ignition system look like.

- When this spins, when this finger matches up with this piece, it's going to jump that gap.

- Another group is working on the aircraft itself.

- Right now we have a project taking off one of the wings off of Cessna 150.

I've never been one to like sit at a desk or office type jobs.

I figured this would be perfect for me.

- Many graduates go on to work for major airlines and aviation companies throughout the San Diego region and beyond.

- I got the associate's degree that they offer here in professional aeronautics.

I fly for SkyWest Airlines.

It's the largest regional carrier.

We have all four American, United, Delta, and Alaska as our partners.

You get to see really cool overnights.

I love gonna Monterey and San Luis Obispo and San Francisco.

- I'm currently a lead technician at Coast Aviation Services, so we work on services and vision jets and on a day-to-day basis, I am wrenching looking through log books, doing, finishing up work orders and everything.

I dunno, it's just an environment that I really, really enjoy.

I, I love all of it.

- I feel really humbled and privileged to be in the position that I'm in where I'm gonna be able to hopefully help fulfill some of that shortage coming up.

- There's a lot to be proud of.

You know, you think about the, the aviation industry and what, what's there and, and the history with it.

The service it provides, how it's helped drive economic engines for society as well as growth in in general and industry.

It's huge, you know, and it's not one that we typically think of right away.

- That's it for this edition of Inside California Education.

If you'd like more information about the program, log onto our website insidecaled.org We have stories from all of our shows and you can connect with us on social media.

Thanks for joining us.

We'll see you next time on Inside California Education.

- Jake, what are you doing right there?

Making a UFO?

- Schools need to protect LGBTQ Youth, especially right now.

- [unintelligible] - When this spins, when this finger matches up with this piece, it's going to jump that gap.

- Funding for Inside California Education is made possible by - The California lottery is turning 40.

And together with players, retail partners and our staff, we're celebrating decades of raising extra money for public education.

More than $46 billion in four decades of having fun.

Thank you.

From the California lottery, - Imagine a credit union where school employees are treated like the heroes you are.

At School's First Federal Credit Union.

Everything we do starts with helping school employees and their families live better today and plan for tomorrow.

Learn more at schoolsfirstfcu.org.

- The Stuart Foundation, improving life outcomes for young people through Education, CollegeBoard, helping all students own their future.

Additional funding for Inside California Education is made possible by these organizations supporting public education.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪