At a time when natural disasters are growing in frequency and causing major disruptions to school communities nationwide, the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) has released a playbook this month to help schools prepare and recover from severe weather events. The playbook provides guidance from analyzing previous school district responses to extreme weather disrupting school operations. NWEA outlined its recommendations in three stages. They are preparation before a disaster occurs, immediate response in the weeks following a disaster, and ongoing recovery strategies that equally focus on academic recovery and student mental health supports.
Key lessons that NWEA learned include:
-To fare better after a disaster, schools need to develop a recovery plan before weather-related damages occur. School leaders should understand the most likely climate hazards their communities could face. They can start by looking at resources from The Brookings Institution that gauge this for schools based on the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s National Risk Index.
-To act as a local resource center during disaster recovery, schools should build relationships with community organizations ahead of time. This will help schools not only address academic needs but also provide supports for student housing, mental health and other services.
-To help students recover from a traumatic event such as a natural disaster, it’s critical that schools reestablish school norms and daily rituals as soon as possible. This helps create a sense of normalcy for students, which can help with their emotional well-being and academic recovery.
-Before schools can successfully address academic recovery, they must first prioritize the unmet needs of their school communities and address student trauma and teacher well-being.
In a separate NWEA report released in August 2025, the organization found that the increasing number of severe weather events is having negative financial, academic and emotional impacts on students and educators.
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