Mental Health Impacts of Wildfire, Flooding and COVID-19 on Fort McMurray School Board Staff and Other Employees: A Comparative Study

Background: Fort McMurray, a city in northern Alberta, Canada, has experienced multiple traumas in the last five years, including the 2016 wildfire, the 2020 floods, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Eighteen months after the wildfire, major depressive disorder (MDD), generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) symptoms were elevated among school board employees in the city. Objective: This study aimed to compare employees of the school board and other employees of Fort McMurray in respect to the impact the 2016 wildfires, the 2019 COVID pandemic, and the 2020 floods had on their mental health. Methodology: A quantitative cross-sectional survey was conducted in Fort McMurray from 24 April to 2 June 2021. Online questionnaires were administered through REDCap and were designed to capture socio-demographic characteristics, clinical as well as wildfire, COVID-19, and flooding-related variables. Mental health outcome variables were captured using self-reported standardized assessment scales. Data were analysed with descriptive statistics, Chi-square/Fisher’s Exact tests, and binary regression analysis. Results: Of the 249 residents who accessed the online survey, 186 completed the survey, giving a response rate of 74.7%. Of these respondents, 93.5% (174) indicated their employment status and were included in the Chi-square analysis. Most of the respondents were female (86.2%, (150)), above 40 years (53.4%, (93)), and were in a relationship (71.3%, (124)). The prevalence values for MDD, GAD and PTSD among respondents were 42.4%, 41.0, and 36.8%, respectively. There was a statistically significant difference between employees of the school board and other employees with respect to likely PTSD prevalence (28% vs. 45%, respectively, p < 0.05), although with other factors controlled for, in a binary logistic regression model, employer type did not significantly predict likely PTSD. Conclusions: The study has established that likely PTSD symptoms were significantly higher in other employees compared to those of school board employees. Greater exposure to the traumatic events and a greater perceived lack of support from other employers might have contributed to the significantly higher prevalence of PTSD in other employees.

The COVID States Project #72: School Board Elections

The COVID-19 pandemic and the backlash against Critical Race Theory have led to increased attention to school board elections. To better understand who votes in these elections and who attends school board meetings, this report examines the demographic characteristics of individuals who say they attended a school board meeting in the past 6 months and those who say they voted for school board at some point in the past year.Turnout in school board elections has historically been very low. Although comprehensive sources of turnout in school board elections are lacking, prior research has estimated turnout in select races to be between 3% and 12%, with even highly salient special elections unable to top 30% turnout. Between high rates of uncontested seats and a lack of salience for these hyper-local positions, school board elections have rarely garnered much attention in the history of American politics. This has changed in recent years, with controversial issues of virtual schooling, mask and vaccine mandates, rules for transgender students, and concerns about how history is taught propelling school board elections to the forefront of numerous news cycles in recent months. The increased attention and salience in school board elections are demonstrated by the spike in the number of school board members facing recall efforts in the 2021 election cycle: According to Ballotpedia, there were 90 recall efforts in 2021, the highest number observed in the 12 years they analyzed. Local news have reported spikes in school board turnout in the 2021 election cycle, with Southlake Texas, Centerville Ohio, Virginia’s Shenandoah valley, and numerous other locales, reporting higher than usual participation.In the run up to the November 2021 elections, rancorous school board meetings garnered national attention and

Opportunities and Barriers for Ontario Teachers in their Delivery of Environmental Education using Information and Communication Technologies

<div>Teaching and learning about the environment in the present day is filled with possibility, challenge, and urgency. Government-mandated environmental curriculum, where it exists, can provide important pedagogical and content guidance. However, bottom-up and teacher-initiated approaches to the timely delivery of relevant and contemporary environmental education are required. This research identifies and describes barriers and opportunities to the delivery of environmental education in Ontario, Canada. It also explores the receptivity of teachers to the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) as tools to complement existing instructional methods, and proposes refocusing on local geographies to exemplify human-environment interactions. Two methods of data collection were used: an online survey (n=54), a semi-structured focus group (n=18). Both approaches engaged teachers within the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), Canada’s largest school board. Three-quarters of study participants (76%) identified that teaching about the environment with hands-on assignments (e.g., data collection, field observations, experiments) was beneficial to student learning. A similar majority of teachers (74%) agreed that environmental education was an afterthought in the Ontario curriculum. A strong positive response from teachers was solicited when they were asked if ICTs were useful teaching tools. Using a Mantel-Haenszel test of trend, teachers’ perception of student enjoyment in, and engagement with, subject matter was shown to be significantly positively associated with the frequency of environmental content included in their lessons (p<0.000). NVivo software was used with content arising from the focus group discussion, and a content analysis was run to identify the frequency with which educators described current environment-related teaching, providing both new details and offering greater context to the online survey responses. While highlighting systemic weaknesses in the delivery of environmental education in Ontario, this study identified tangible avenues that teachers and schools can pursue in order to bridge the gap between environmental rhetoric and action-oriented practice.</div><div><br></div><div>Keywords: environmental education, place-based learning, Ontario, information and communication technology (ICTs), policy, mixed methods </div>

Opportunities and Barriers for Ontario Teachers in their Delivery of Environmental Education using Information and Communication Technologies

<div>Teaching and learning about the environment in the present day is filled with possibility, challenge, and urgency. Government-mandated environmental curriculum, where it exists, can provide important pedagogical and content guidance. However, bottom-up and teacher-initiated approaches to the timely delivery of relevant and contemporary environmental education are required. This research identifies and describes barriers and opportunities to the delivery of environmental education in Ontario, Canada. It also explores the receptivity of teachers to the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) as tools to complement existing instructional methods, and proposes refocusing on local geographies to exemplify human-environment interactions. Two methods of data collection were used: an online survey (n=54), a semi-structured focus group (n=18). Both approaches engaged teachers within the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), Canada’s largest school board. Three-quarters of study participants (76%) identified that teaching about the environment with hands-on assignments (e.g., data collection, field observations, experiments) was beneficial to student learning. A similar majority of teachers (74%) agreed that environmental education was an afterthought in the Ontario curriculum. A strong positive response from teachers was solicited when they were asked if ICTs were useful teaching tools. Using a Mantel-Haenszel test of trend, teachers’ perception of student enjoyment in, and engagement with, subject matter was shown to be significantly positively associated with the frequency of environmental content included in their lessons (p<0.000). NVivo software was used with content arising from the focus group discussion, and a content analysis was run to identify the frequency with which educators described current environment-related teaching, providing both new details and offering greater context to the online survey responses. While highlighting systemic weaknesses in the delivery of environmental education in Ontario, this study identified tangible avenues that teachers and schools can pursue in order to bridge the gap between environmental rhetoric and action-oriented practice.</div><div><br></div><div>Keywords: environmental education, place-based learning, Ontario, information and communication technology (ICTs), policy, mixed methods </div>

On leadership: When activists speak with sound and fury

School board meetings have become increasingly contentious in recent months, but, as Josh Starr explains, the tactics activists are using are not new. During his career as a district leader, he saw parents and other members of the public approach school boards with constant demands that their particular concerns receive attention. When these issues are on the fringe or outside the board’s purview, yet activists engage in increasingly outrageous behavior, leaders develop the habit of tuning out public voices, which serves no one.

Religious Liberty Sacralized: The Persistence of Christian Dissenting Tradition and the Cincinnati Bible War

In 1869, the Cincinnati school board ended a forty-year tradition of Bible reading in the schools in an attempt to encourage Catholics to use them, thus provoking national controversy and a lawsuit brought by pro-Bible advocates. Scholars regularly cite the Ohio Supreme Court decision in favor of the school board as a landmark in the legal separation of church and state. This article interrogates the meaning of the secularization of law by examining expressions of juristic, pedagogic, and popular consciousness in the multiple levels and spaces where individuals raised and resolved constitutional questions on education. Dissenting Christian tradition shaped the legal brief of Stanley Matthews, the school board's lead attorney. Matthews' sacralized the religious liberty guarantee found in the Ohio Constitution within a post-millennialist framework. Ohio Chief Justice John Welch hybridized Christian dissenting tradition with deistic rationalism in <u>Board of Education v. Minor, et al</u>, thus appealing to as broad a constituency as had the right to elect justices to the Ohio Supreme Court. The limited, technical ruling allowed for a metropole/periphery divide in educational practice, so that Bible reading and prayer in Ohio public schools continued well into the 20th century. Far from a landmark in secularization of the law, the Bible War case demonstrates the persistent power of religion to frame law, including the law of religious liberty.

How to Become Indispensable to School Administrators

The chapter provides new school social workers with practical information about how they can make themselves indispensable to school administrators. Social workers must collaborate with administrators and fully understand their roles within the district because these leaders directly impact the social worker’s tasks and duties. Social workers are advised to learn about the organizational structure of the district and the roles of the school board, the superintendent, and principals. They should observe the leadership styles displayed by administrators and learn what their goals are and what data they need from the social worker. The chapter details a practical plan for developing and nurturing working relationships with administrators, along with strategies for linking the social worker’s goals with those of administrators.