Administrators
(Notes taken from School Mental Health Leadership Academy on January 15, 2008)
Implications of what we have heard today:
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Needs in regards to teacher wellness, violence and suicide.
Enjoyed list of programs given today. These tools will help kids.
School districts have to start thinking of how to allocate funds to start
working in the prevention aspect.
Hannibal School District - starting a parent liaison working with families.
Starting with PAT families and making contacts with siblings in upper grades.
Hazelwood School District – two social workers – ingrained with behavior
patterns provide services at an earlier age – at elementary and early
childhood levels.
Early childhood issues getting worse – need more to engage teaching staff
and families – good to start early and be preventative.
Suggested we “scream” louder and let the legislature know we need funds to
help our young children.
Grants – need more help at elementary level.
Important to start young, but there is a dilemma by having middle school and
high school population that have high needs.
Need to juggle funds to help older kids while also funding prevention
programs.
Have interventions in place, but how effective are those programs? Could we
reallocate funds to be of more benefit?
We need to do better – “tooting our own horn”.
In legislature, early childhood is not mentioned.
Don’t send e-mails.
Lower number on bill discussion – happened sooner.
Blunt wanted more PAT money so they passed it. We need to let them know
the results.
Columbia: more children being diagnosed, lots of services available, but none
for mental health in early childhood.
Mexico: difficult issue – hard to simplify to put in schools. It is overwhelming
to address because there is only so many funds available. It is hard to put
one more thing on staff to do. Very complicated issue.
Real educational challenge – can focus on textbooks harder to present funds
which are needed to help with mental health issues.
Problems that have been in high school and middle school are moving down
to elementary aged students.
Staff is leaving because of mental health issues.
Does it improve achievement? If mental health issues are addressed – scores
will increase because students are in the room getting the instruction.
Services and Improvements:
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Moberly: service more children, fewer high needs children, and good PAT
program.
Parkway: blend non-special programs with disabled kids – working on
communicating between preschool and kindergarten.
Blue Springs: serve high majority in PAT, several preschools - addition of
social worker, and build new early childhood center.
Hazelwood: added two social workers and PAT is strong.
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Hannibal: PAT, MPP, ECSE, Title I, all trained in PAT and do home visits, work
with Head Start to provide home visits, looking at extending PAT at least
through kindergarten.
So. Boone: Preschool, PAT and increase of preschool staff.
Columbia: support Head Start, 6th year of implementing PBS including day
care centers.
Hallsville: new primary building, two ECSE classes, PAT, and PLC school.
Centralia: New building, starting preschool next year and strong PAT
program.
Mexico: new early childhood center – connected between preschool and
elementary schools – very helpful.
Lindbergh: active PAT, half and fully day preschools, early childhood
programs together, and staff training.
Lee’s Summit: get building that houses all services – focus room facilitators.
Pilot Grove: Missouri Project Preschool, Early Childhood Special Education
servicing for students, and PAT - a new educator who has tripled number of
families involved.
Where should we go from here? What’s the highest need?
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Elementary – K-6 – curriculum programs.
Kindergarten – 2nd grade – helping parents become less dependent on PAT.
Different mental health issues are affecting children. Diagnosis vs. treatment.
Socials skills.
Environmental factors impacting mental health and the clinician’s treatment
of these students.
How to deal with the whole child (the child, the family, and the community) to
impact changes. Developing community partnerships. What is the
community? (The differences between city and county).
Resources – formulate a mental health resource book. An annual publication
and any evaluation of these resources.
Prevention for all students – the empathy- and resilience skills needed by
suburban students.
The class and cultural issues – there are differences in the mental health
needs.
The explosion of the Bi-Polar diagnosis.
One difficulty – finding grant funding that goes down to pre-K, usually stops
at kindergarten.
Prevention at early childhood (3-4 years old) is the best spent money – it is
where we can make the most impact.
Working with children with anti-social behaviors. Parents are the key to
working with these children.
Move focus to include mental health personnel to schools. Schools have to
include mental health people… DESE needs to have certification… Still sending
the message that this is an add-on to education – higher education needs to
produce people that can do both mental health and education.
When giving reports to Board of Education – give them factual information
about behavioral issues.
Governing Council needs to offer money to help districts evaluate need and
what resources are available.
How well trained are teachers, counselors, psychologist in mental health
issues? – Do they feel comfortable in working with younger ones but not older
students?
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Need to train mental health people to be prepared to deal with behavior
issues – counselors are overburdened with other duties.