Elementary Schools' Response to Student Wellness Needs during the COVID-19 Shutdown: A Qualitative Exploration Using the R = MC2 Readiness Heuristic.

Hannah G Calvert,Michaela Mcquilkin,Julianne A Wenner,Lindsey Turner,Hannah G Lane

doi:10.3390/ijerph19010279

Abstract

During spring of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic and accompanying public health advisories forced K-12 schools throughout the United States to suspend in-person instruction. School personnel rapidly transitioned to remote provision of academic instruction and wellness services such as school meals and counseling services. The aim of this study was to investigate how schools responded to the transition to remote supports, including assessment of what readiness characteristics schools leveraged or developed to facilitate those transitions. Semi-structured interviews informed by school wellness implementation literature were conducted in the spring of 2020. Personnel (n = 50) from 39 urban and rural elementary schools nationwide participated. The readiness = motivation capacity2 (R = MC2) heuristic, developed by Scaccia and colleagues, guided coding to determine themes related to schools’ readiness to support student wellness in innovative ways during the pandemic closure. Two distinct code sets emerged, defined according to the R = MC2 heuristic (1) Innovations: roles that schools took on during the pandemic response, and (2) Readiness: factors influencing schools’ motivation and capacity to carry out those roles. Schools demonstrated unprecedented capacity and motivation to provide crucial wellness support to students and families early in the COVID-19 pandemic. These efforts can inform future resource allocation and new strategies to implement school wellness practices when schools resume normal operations.

Highlights

More than 50 million children and youth attended public elementary and secondary schools in the U.S in 2019 [1]
Our study describes the critical roles rural and urban schools played in supporting student wellness, and the infrastructure and processes that supported these roles during the COVID-19 pandemic
While our study provides critical insights from school personnel during the early stages of pandemic response, continuing to conduct rigorous mixed-methods implementation research to understand schools’ organizational climate for implementing the WSCC

Summary

Introduction

More than 50 million children and youth attended public elementary and secondary schools in the U.S in 2019 [1]. For many of those students, including the 22 million who receive school lunch at free or reduced price [2], schools are not just settings for educational services, and for receiving crucial wellness services. In 2014, the CDC and the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development developed the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) model to highlight the importance of addressing the multifaceted needs of children and youth to foster optimal learning

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