July 2024: Dr. Kristen Cuthrell

Director of the Rural Education Institute (REI)
Professor in Elementary Education and Middle Grades Education at East Carolina University

Mitigating COVID-19 Impact: Implementing a Community School Framework in Rural Schools

“We’re trying to make sure that what we’re doing is for the growth of all of us when it comes to community-engaged learning in schools and lifting up all our students and families.”

Dr. Kristen Cuthrell

Across the country, states and local communities are continuing to rebuild in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, as many still experience its adverse effects. One of the more notable and lasting changes has been the impact of virtual learning on students, educators, and school districts. Research shows how online schooling over the pandemic years has stunted learning growth, as well as social and emotional development in younger students, largely due to the disconnect between students and teachers in a virtual space.

In 2022, the Collaboratory partnered with the Department of Public Instruction to create the COVID-19 Learning Impact Program, which funds research relating to learning recovery in North Carolina. As part of this project portfolio, Dr. Cuthrell’s work is in implementing a university-assisted community school at the PW Moore Elementary School (PW Moore). Community schools serve as a way of providing resources to local communities beyond education. These schools are uniquely designed to cater to the specific needs of the surrounding area. There are four primary pillars of a community school: collaborative leadership, engaged parents and community members, extended and enriched learning experiences, and integrated student support services.

What is a university-assisted community school, and how is it unique compared to a traditional community school structure?

The exciting thing about university-assisted community schools is that you’re leveraging the resources within and surrounding a community that are associated with an institution of higher education. Add on the layer of research expertise and community partnerships that already exist in university systems, and there are really some dynamic touch points that you can get into. When you tie that to the strong community school framework that is already nationally out there, we have that base for what a community school can look like, feel like, be like, and imagine like.

We’re trying to make sure that what we’re doing is for the growth of all of us when it comes to community-engaged learning in schools and lifting up all our students and families. That’s the difference; leveraging the university, but still relying on those pillars of community school framework.

What is the value of a university-assisted community-school framework on rural schools?

It’s valuable for all in that it’s important for all types of universities to learn from each other. There’s the shared vision of community engagement and of coming together and growing. I think that’s important, because sometimes a university has more resources at its fingertips that can speed up the impact of things, but those resources don’t matter if there’s not a trust that can go back and forth. One of the things that makes North Carolina unique is that it is really poised to fast-track university-assisted community schools, because of the intense network of UNC system institutions, our robust community college systems, and dynamic private colleges and universities.

How have you seen university-assisted community schools work to mitigate the effects of the pandemic on schools and the greater community in your research?

None of us were really expecting the shutdown to be as long or as isolating as it was and it’s scary. What we have seen is people pull in and refocus on basic needs and living day to day. The community school framework has enabled us to draw people back into the school and anchor the school as a community center point. At PW Moore, when we switched to the model of family dinner nights and letting faculty and staff sit in community with our families and kids, it really opened the doors where people kept wanting to come back.

The families were expressing that they understood more about what the school was trying to do, and they felt more readily okay to touch base with their teachers. We’ve had teachers come back and tell us that the conversations they were having with families seemed much more genuine. We hear from district superintendents and other school building leaders that they want to try something like this. If there’s buy in, you can make things work and grow with it.

What are the next steps in your research?

There are lots of changes in leadership in any school system. At one high school, the principal just announced her retirement. They’ve already been making plans for who would go into that role, but that might be a brand-new person to community schools. So that’s going to be a fascinating opportunity to study that type of transition. At the university, we’ve been looking at changing our curriculum for our teacher development and providing opportunities for our students who are training to be school counselors to have placements in rural districts in North Carolina.

For me, personally, another area for research is to see how working on that entry level pipeline and the schools itself, we get the synergy that can keep things sustainable, so it’s not just done in five years when we don’t have funding for a community school’s coordinator anymore. There are so many possibilities with this.