Student perceptions of school climate and safety after the collective trauma of COVID-19 and racial injustice syndemic.

For people in marginalized communities, particularly the Black and African American community, the combined, disproportionate damage and loss from of the pandemic and a cacophony of racial injustices offer cause for labeling the phenomenon a syndemic. Syndemic is defined as “a conceptual framework for understanding diseases or health conditions that arise in populations and that are exacerbated by the social, economic, environmental, and political milieu in which a population is immersed” (Singer et al., 2017, p. 881). The purpose of this study is to explore, describe, and analyze Kentucky students’ perceptions of school climate and safety by demographic groups, racial and ethnic groups, socioeconomic groups, and by state of emergency experienced in 2022, 2023, and 2024. I analyzed student responses on the Quality of School Climate and Safety Survey (QSCS) administered by the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) as a portion of the Kentucky Summative Assessment (KSA) (Kentucky Department of Education, 2024a; Kentucky Department of Education, 2024b; Kentucky Department of Education, n.d.-d). Through repeated measures ANOVA, I conducted analyses of students’ survey responses as a measurement of the syndemic’s influence on student mental health and wellbeing. In addition to demographics, I categorized all Kentucky public schools into four other groups of schools for analysis. These groups included schools in counties where COVID-19, tornadoes, floods, or protests against racial injustices prompted a state of emergency declaration. Outcomes proved that perceptions of climate and safety from middle school students in the three years of the study were approximately ten points lower than the perceptions reported by elementary school students in the same three years. High school students reported consistently lower scores than middle school students across demographics. Students who are identified as economically disadvantaged reported significantly lower scores than non-economically disadvantaged students at all school levels each year. Students who identify as African American and those who identify as two or more races report the lowest scores overall across the three school levels, while students who identify as Asian and non-Hispanic white recorded the highest perceptions of climate and safety. The climate and safety scores from African American students were significantly lower than scores from almost all other racial groups. Students in counties where protests occurred recorded the lowest perceptions of climate and safety, while students in counties that experienced flooding had the highest perceptions of school climate and safety. Apart from survey responses from students who identify as African American, overall trends of responses to both climate and safety surveys showed improvement in 2024. Understanding these results are corroborated from multiple statistical evaluations suggests that students in the Black and African American community experienced a syndemic in 2020 to 2022. Implications exist for creating and implementing programs that provide targeted support for all population groups who report consistently lower perceptions of school climate and safety. Keywords: syndemic, COVID-19, school climate, school safety, student perceptions of school climate and safety, economically challenged, racial injustice, natural disasters, collective trauma