A bill requiring local schools to implement protocols for extreme weather situations has been signed into law.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed a bill requiring schools to create extreme weather guidelines after the 2023 death of 12-year-old Yahushua Robinson, who collapsed in the heat during PE class at Canyon Lake Middle School. (Via GoFundMe)
Senate Bill 1248, nicknamed Yahushua’s Law, is in honor of a 12-year-old boy who died during PE at Canyon Lake Middle School during a summer 2023 heatwave. Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Sunday, Sept. 22, that he had signed the bill, which received bipartisan support in the state Senate.
The bill introduced by State Sen. Melissa Hurtado, D-Bakersfield, who co-authored it with Assemblymember Akilah Weber, D-La Mesa, was first suggested by a representative of Yahushua Robinson’s family.
Hurtado said that the boy’s death should have been prevented and that, if the school had a policy in place, he would still be alive today. She said she was approached by one of Yahushua’s loved ones about the bill and she wanted to honor him and his spirit while also protecting students.
Members of the Robinson family could not immediately be reached for comment Monday, Sept. 30.
Local school districts and the California Department of Education will now be required to have a set of guidelines in place to address extreme weather conditions. The law requires experts to be brought in to work on those guidelines. The guidelines also will need to be informed by research on climate change and weather patterns.
“We want to make sure that every school across the state is prepared for these types of weather events,” Hurtado said.
The Lake Elsinore Unified School District, which operates Canyon Lake Middle School, is aware of the new law, spokesperson Melissa Valdez wrote in a Monday, Sept. 30, email.
“We will be reviewing the legislation and working alongside our educational partners as guidelines are available,” Valdez wrote.
On Aug. 29, 2023, the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department responded to an emergency call at Canyon Lake Middle School at 11 a.m., after Robinson collapsed during PE.
Yahushua had been sprinting with other students, according to a description of video footage written by Deputy Coroner Myranda Montez earlier this year.
A coroner’s report, released in March, said that a heart defect and heat and physical exertion contributed to Robinson’s death.
The day Robinson died, a heat wave was hitting much of Southern California and Riverside County was among eight counties with heat advisories and six with excessive heat warnings.
Hurtado said that extreme heat-related diseases are a problem in her community and that all need to look at the impact of climate change on communities.
“That’s also a climate-related issue that we need to be thinking about,” Hurtado said. “And it’s not just extreme heat we need to be thinking about but just overall how climate change is impacting our health.”
There are more heat-related illness deaths per year on average in the United States than any other weather hazard, the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment website stated in August 2023.
The website states that during hotter weather, people are exposed to heat and higher levels of air pollutants and that the heat accelerates the formation of certain air pollutants and traps them closer to the ground. The combination increases the risk of respiratory, cardiovascular and other health effects.
In Lake Elsinore, the temperature reached 96 degrees by 11 a.m. — around the time Yahushua collapsed — and National Weather Service archives for the area show a daytime high of 107. The Weather Channel lists a high of 104 degrees for that day.
The latest heatwave in the Inland Empire hit over Labor Day weekend with highs in the 90s and low 100s with peak temperatures reaching 110 degrees. The temperatures were roughly three to six degrees above average, Chandler Price, a weather service meteorologist, said in a Sunday, Sept. 1, interview.
The triple-digit heat wave struck in the days leading to the Airport, Bridge and Line fires, which closed multiple schools across Southern California because of the poor air quality and the threat of the blazes.
A 2016 study from the University of Wisconsin–Madison found climate change enhanced the drying of organic matter and doubled the number of large fires between 1984 and 2015 in the western United States, and a 2021 study supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said that climate change has been the main driver of the increase in fire weather link in the western United States.
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The effects of climate should have been addressed years earlier, Hurtado said.
“The reality is that the impacts of climate change are being felt now, and that they’re only going to get worse with time,” Hurtado said.
The California Department of Education has until Jan. 1, 2026, to set its guidelines. Local school districts will have to follow suit by July 1, 2026.
In the absence of state guidelines, some school districts have set their own. Western Riverside County districts with such policies include the Riverside and Temecula Valley unified school districts.
