Improving student mental health program approved at Wynford Board of Education meeting

BUCYRUS—At Wynford’s November Board of Education meeting, the board approved a program to help serve their students and better their mental health.

Wynford counselors Tiffany Roush and Shelli Ashley gave a presentation to the board on a program called Hope Squad.

According to its website, Hope Squad is a “peer-to-peer suicide prevention program.” The program is being utilized in over one thousand, one hundred schools across thirty-five states and Canada.

The members of Hope Squad are students who are nominated by their peers and will be trained (with parental permission) to identify at-risk students, provide friendship, and seek help from an adult.

A few of the goals of the Hope Squad include: improving mental health education while reducing the stigma, normalizing help-seeking for emotional distress, educating and engaging parents in suicide prevention programming, enhancing school culture as a community of support for students, and reducing and eliminating suicide.

When it comes to Hope Squad, recent data has shown that over twenty-five percent of referrals to counselors in schools with Hope Squad have been from members, and of those, fourteen percent of those students were hospitalized.

In an anonymous survey sent out to Wynford Junior and Senior High students, sixty percent of those said they would feel more comfortable going to a peer instead of an adult. Through a series of other questions in the survey, the need to bring a program like this into the school was established.

The board unanimously voted to bring the program into the school district.

Also, at the meeting, the board was given a presentation on the Bucyrus Backpack Program food drive.

This year, five-county schools – Bucyrus Secondary, Colonel Crawford, Fairway, Wynford Elementary, and Wynford Junior/Senior High – collected food items during the month of October to donate to the backpack program. Over three thousand boxes of food items were donated, with Wynford Elementary collecting over 1000 items and Wynford Junior/Senior high collecting over 900 items.

A purchase order was approved with Southern Bleacher Company, Inc. for new baseball and softball bleachers.

November’s board meeting served as the last meeting members Debbi Gifford, Steve Crall, and Jeff Bessinger before the new members take their place in January. Gifford, Crall, and Bessinger were all thanked for their time served on the board to help better the school.

The December board meeting was canceled, but meetings will resume beginning in January.