Improving the emotional health of students looks different in these five school districts |
On Board Online • November 7, 2022
By George Basler
Special Correspondent
The social and emotional health of students is a paramount concern, and the COVID pandemic has made it an even more pressing issue.
That was the message of Jay Worona, NYSSBA's deputy executive director and general counsel, who moderated a panel discussion of "Addressing the Well-Being of Our Students" at NYSSBA's 2022 Annual Convention & Education Expo. The discussion featured officials from five school districts who were selected by the state Education Department as having noteworthy programs to support student well-being.
The purpose was to highlight practices that are working and can be replicated as districts work to create comprehensive school-based mental health systems.
Here is a summary of the five districts' presentations:
North Syracuse CSD: Suicide prevention training
An important step in developing a mental health plan is reaching out to the community, said Lisa Goldberg, director of social and emotional learning and social studies for the district.
That's what North Syracuse officials did after two high school students committed suicide weeks apart in 2019. "We made a decision to be very open," Goldberg said.
The district partnered with local nonprofit Contact Community Services to implement "Suicide Safety in Schools." The program provides crisis and mental health training for staff, parents and students.
The emphasis is on "a warm hand off," Goldberg said. "If teachers see warning signals, they do a warm hand off to counselors," she noted.
The district also added a Restorative Practice Specialist and a Family Engagement Specialist to a school with the highest poverty rate. In addition, officials used funding from Onondaga County to establish Liberty Resources mental health clinics for students and their families in all school buildings except for two scheduled to undergo renovation.
The district's website now features a wellness section that includes a listing of local and national resources where families can go for help in a time of crisis.
"The biggest take away is that, instead of feeling a sense of shame, the superintendent and the board made a courageous effort to ask for help," Goldberg said.
Highland CSD: Peer support
Highland is using students to help other students. Specifically, the district worked with Families Together, a community organization, to develop a Junior Youth Peer Advocate program at the high school.
The idea behind the program is that students will talk to peers about problems they may be experiencing before they talk to adults, Michael Paff, the high school psychologist, said.
School officials recruited a group of some 12 students to be peer leaders. These students went through eight weeks of training led by Robert Lettieri, youth peer services training manager with Families Together.
This training focused on how to help students have "sensitive conversations" about problems they may be experiencing and gently guide them to counselors if they need help for serious issues, Paff said. The school set up "hang outs" where peer leaders could meet with students to comfortably discuss their concerns.
Paff emphasized the peer leaders are empathetic listeners, not counselors, or therapists. Their meetings are support sessions for fellow students, not therapy sessions.
"We know students are having conversations about issues like anxiety and depression in every school. In this case, these conversations are happening with peers who know how to handle it," Paff said.
South Colonie CSD: The SHAPE assessment
South Colonie took a good look at itself in developing a mental health plan. The district partnered with Albany County to complete a SHAPE assessment, a systematic process to assess the district's mental health system and identify areas that needed improvement.
The assessment team included representatives from each of the district's school buildings who rated the district's performance, Jennifer Judge, school psychologist, said. The team realized, while individual schools were doing good things, there was no overarching district structure to address student well-being, she noted.
Based on the results, South Colonie applied to be part of SHAPE UP New York, a six-month learning collaborative offered through a partnership with the University of Rochester Medical Center and the state Office of Mental Health.
The collaboration gave the district the opportunity to dialogue with other districts and set goals, Judge said.
One outcome was the creation of a multidisciplinary District Mental Health Team that holds monthly meetings to discuss needs and strategies around mental health issues and create consistent practices. Students sit on the team along with parents and school district staff.
Another outcome was the implementation of universal screening of students in kindergarten and grades five and nine to identify the needs of students. The district also developed a Community Resource Map for families and imbedded a social-emotional learning curriculum in grades K-6.
"SHAPE is very helpful in addressing the big picture," Judge said.
Nassau BOCES: School climate surveys
The BOCES effort centers on gathering information and communication. A main feature is a school climate survey BOCES distributes each school year to the students, parents and staff in the 56 public school districts in its service area. The most recent survey received some 100,000 responses.
Officials use aggregated data from the survey to determine what issues need to be addressed to improve school climate, said Audre Midura, director of School Community Partnerships for the BOCES.
The rational is "that you can't change what you don't measure," she noted.
For example, "one thing that was glaringly obvious from the most recent survey was that students felt they were not taught conflict resolution skills," Midura noted. As a result, BOCES initiated restorative practice training at the county level.
The BOCES has also created an online mental health consortium that gives mental health support staff the opportunity to learn and collaborate. And it coordinates 15 "collegial circles" for professional staff - such as school psychologist and social workers - who meet monthly to discuss issues impacting the social and emotional well-being of students.
Malone CSD: Trauma responsive practices
The expression "It takes a village to raise a child" may have become a cliche. But in a rural, high poverty district such as Malone, it's a truism, said Chris Van Houten, school psychologist. The district works closely with community agencies to get help for struggling students.
One effort involves the North Star Behavioral Health Partnership. Counselors from the agency are assigned to each of the district's five schools to hold counseling sessions with students who have social and emotional issues.
A second effort involves the Berkshire Farm Center. It provides comprehensive "wraparound services" to students from high needs facilities that include mentoring and summer programs.
Malone also worked with a national expert to provide training in trauma responsive practices to teams from all five schools. The practices focus on responding to, and managing, challenging student. The teams are now doing "turn-key training" for other staff members in their buildings, Van Houten said.
"A lot of our student population has dealt with trauma. We must be aware of the signs," he said.