A Call to Justice: Understanding how Environmental Disasters Disrupt our Schools, Students, and Communities and Providing Guidance to Enact Change

In the 2010s, the United States faced 119 billion-dollar disasters, totaling roughly $802 billion and claiming over 5,200 lives. Research also shows that these environmental disruptions are occurring more frequently and with higher intensity (Davis, 2020). My central research focus will address how environmental disasters impact schooling communities; specifically, how such events interrupt learning for students, interfere with educators’ practices within and outside of the classroom, and hinder families from recovering long-term. In this presentation, I will summarize recent studies on community-centered strategies that support schools, students, and their families after hazards. I will also share my own lessons learned from collecting data across a diverse landscape in multiple regions of the USA. Although the studies in this presentation occurred in divergent environments, my lessons learned from these projects remain consistent: respondents acknowledged that the storms exacerbate preexisting inequalities and demand a just recovery that enables them to truly recover and return to a better, healthier state than before the event.

Cassandra R. Davis is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Public Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her work exposes the extent to which targeted groups (e.g., communities of color, low-income, etc.), who are already more susceptible to environmental disruptions, are made more vulnerable following an event. She defines environmental disruptions as anything from hurricanes to viral pandemics and intends to identify best-practices to support these groups, as well as educators, interested stakeholders, and policymakers.