December 20, 2022

ROSSEY 2022: A Year In Review

Travis Ballstadt

The ROSSEY Project supports a safe, confident return to classrooms during COVID-19.

PROJECT OVERVIEW:

With your help, in 2022 we:

  • Talked to school staff, parents, and students about thoughts and questions related to  COVID-19 testing and vaccinations.
  • Completed first set of surveys for K-5th graders.
  • Started enrolling families with students in early learning (pre-kindergarten).

In 2023, we plan to:

  • Send three comic books to students and two videos to parents. Comic #1 is pictured here!
  • Send out a second survey in Spring 2023 to gather your thoughts and experiences on COVID-19 now.

The ReOpening Schools Safely and Educating Youth (ROSSEY) project is a partnership between the Yakima School District, the Center for Community Health Promotion, and the University of Washington. Together, we’re hoping to provide information about COVID-19 to help students continue to stay safe at school. We’d like to share what we’ve learned so far!

WHO IS PARTICIPATING

There are 685 Yakima School District students and 520 parents who are helping us understand their concerns about COVID-19 testing, vaccinations, and returning to school.

Students

Participating students were 54% female, 79% Hispanic, 15.6% White, 1% Native American, and 4% were Black, Asians, or provided another answer. Students were evenly split across grades K-5.

Parents

Participating parents were about equally split among English speaker dominant, Spanish speaker dominant, and bi-lingual (Spanish and English) speaking. Twenty-nine percent of parents graduated from high school and 15% graduated from college.

WHAT WE LEARNED

Healthy Behaviors

Many students have been using healthy behaviors, which help to stop the spread of COVID-19. Here are some of the things your students have been doing:

74 percent of Yakima students wear their masks. 83 percent of Yakima students wash their hands with soap or sanitizer. 24 percent of Yakima students cover their mouth when they cough or sneeze. 60 percent of Yakima students practice social distancing. 70 percent of Yakima students try to avoid large gatherings

COVID-19 VACCINATIONS

As of November 30, 2022:

  • 50% of parents believe their families are safer when they receive a COVID-19 vaccine.
  • 43% of parents believe it is important for their child to receive a COVID-19 vaccine.
  • 44% of parents believe that the COVID-19 vaccine is safe and 46% believe that it does a good job of preventing COVID-19.

RECOMMENDED CITATION:

Pascoe, K.M., Bishop, S., Duran, M., Zheng, Z., Perez, G., Segal, N., Garza, L., Linde, S., Ibarra, G., Ramirez, M., Garrison, M., Shaw, P., Ko, L.K. (2023). ROSSEY 2022: A Year in Review. Seattle: Health Promotion Research Center.

We appreciate the partnership and the support of the Community Advisory Board and the Yakima School District on this project!

This research was, in part, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) agreement number 1 OT2 HD107544-01. The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the NIH.

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