School Climate and Emotional Wellbeing

Existing research indicates that positive school climate reduces teacher burnout. Presently, burnout is driving educators to leave the field at record levels. Many policymakers are focusing efforts on reducing burnout, however, rather than focus on the negative outcome, we aim to focus on the more positive construct: wellbeing. This study reports findings of the KY school culture survey, Impact KY. Using two measures, school climate and emotional wellbeing, we test two hypotheses: (1) there is a positive relationship between school climate and educator emotional wellbeing on the 2022 Impact KY survey and (2) positive school climate in 2020 reduced the pandemic-related decline in schoolwide emotional well-being. We use multivariate regression models with district-level fixed effects to find support for both hypotheses. 2022 climate predicted more positive wellbeing and 2020 climate predicted more positive changes in emotional wellbeing from 2020 to 2022. These findings are particularly important given the state of the teaching workforce and suggest that school and district leaders should focus on building and maintaining a positive school climate to support educator wellbeing and career longevity.