Lake County School District #7 (LCSD#7) will be one of four Oregon school districts piloting mental health literacy and support services for students and staff.
LCSD#7 was awarded nearly $400,000 through an Oregon Department of Education (ODE) grant to strengthen mental health in education with the goal of developing tools, a roadmap and resources for other school districts across Oregon.
Dr. Grace Bullock, senior mental health officer at ODE, said the goal is to work with school districts on developing individual plans and to engage with local partners to increase mental health resources and support both inside and outside of the classroom. She said while the grant had been in the works before COVID, the pandemic has highlighted the issues of mental health in school classrooms for students, staff and teachers.
“Each school district in Oregon faces its own mental health challenges and the goal of this grant it to help school districts develop local resources for their individual needs,” said Bullock.
She noted that the program will be tailored for each school district with support from researchers from the University of Oregon as urban districts often face different issues than rural and frontier school districts. ODE chose four total schools, with each representing either urban, suburban, rural or frontier school districts to be part of the pilot program.
LCSD#7 Supt. Michael Carter said “frontier” is a new designation within ODE for distributing the grant.
“I take this grant and being a pilot program seriously. We are going to do this right and the work will not only be beneficial for LCSD#7 but for all school districts in eastern Oregon,” said Carter.
LCSD#7 hired Jennifer Schulze, director of student services in LCSD#7, to oversee the implementation of the grant. Schulze has worked in education in Oregon for 25 years and has taught at different schools and levels of education and last lived in Amity.
The grant has three pieces and is designed to work with parents, families and the public to build a robust conversation about mental health and the resources available.
“The program will have three pieces, or components. The first is building mental health literacy. The second is creating behavioral health courses. The third is a community care project,” said Schulze.
ODE is leaving many of the small details of how to move forward on the three pieces up to the individual school districts, but is providing support behind the scenes.
Bullock and Schulze both said that one of the goals of mental health literacy is to have a community wide conversation about the mental health of students in the community — both inside and outside of the classroom. Bullock said oftentimes students experience mental health issues outside of the classroom that impact their ability to learn inside the classroom.
“The behavioral health courses will be using researched-based methods and techniques to help students get the resources they need, and training administrators, parents and teachers on de-escalation techniques, social and emotional learning,” said Schulze.
Carter said the district has more discretion on the community care project and the goal is to help with the isolation many students — both at the high school and elementary school level — have faced over the past couple of years. While not as dramatic as previous classes, he said that the class of 2022 missed many rites of passage in their final year compared to pre-COVID classes. The community care project aims to work with community partners designing activities and events throughout the year outside of school for students and their families to be a part of.
“One of the goals is to help students learn how to be successful and that is using a decision making matrix designed by Stanford University,” said Schulze. “We want to make sure that students do not fall through the cracks, and support them when they are out in the community.”
The matrix is designed to teach students in the era of overwhelming information and sharing how to react when they need to make a decision. it teaches students to recognize that people are only as strong as their weakest link in the matrix.
“The goal is to build resiliency within students and help them grow. Students are a resilient community and this will help teach them self-regulation,” said Schulze.
Carter and Schulze will be reaching out of the classroom on building a robust infrastructure to support students and their families, along with addressing the needs of building mental health capacity in rural communities that often have a lower ratio of mental health professionals.
Bullock said there is a real shortage of people with masters or doctorate degrees in mental health, especially in rural areas, and the goal is to help teachers, staff and parents understand mental health issues and the steps they can take to connect to resources.
“We are partnering with each district and co-designing with them the model,” said Bullock. “The goal is to design a sustainable and effective program.”
“It is seriously vital we do this right and we do not take our responsibility lightly,” said Carter. “At the end of the grant we want to have something other school districts can follow.”
For more information call 541-947-3347.