5 minute read
Weatherford ISD
▲ Weatherford ISD’s BESST program serves to identify and respond to students in need of emotional and social support.
Mental health Is the BESST place to start
by Leila Kalmbach
Weatherford ISD
County: Parker ESC region: 11 Superintendent: Dr. Beau Rees 2020 enrollment: 8,074 Number of schools: 10
Four years ago, if a student missed a week of school in Weatherford ISD, it’s possible no one in the district would’ve known why. After all, students miss school all the time: they get sick, they have family emergencies, they go on vacation. But there was another reason that students were sometimes missing several days of class in a row, says Racheal Rife, coordinator of social-emotional supports and former executive director of instructional support for the district — days spent at an inpatient mental health facility following a suicidal outcry or other mental health crisis. “There’s still quite a stigma around mental health issues, and so sometimes nobody knew,” Rife says. After returning to school, those students would
▲ Counselors work one on one with students in WISD’s
BESST program. ▲ The BESST team is made up of trained professionals on each of the district’s 11 campuses.
continue to struggle. Their grades would drop. They would have extreme anxiety. And because the school had no idea, they couldn’t help. The school also couldn’t educate kids whose mental health needs weren’t being met. “If I can’t self-regulate, if I’m not okay emotionally and mentally, I can’t learn anything,” Rife says. “I’m not going to learn to read, I’m not going to learn any academics.” That’s what prompted the district to start their Behavior, Emotional, Social Support Team, or BESST, now in its fourth year. The team is composed of professionals throughout the district’s 11 campuses who are specially trained to respond to students in need of tier two and three emotional and social supports. The team includes Rife; the executive director of college, career and counseling; four secondary crisis intervention counselors; an elementary and a secondary behavior and social emotional (BASE) classroom teacher; an elementary crisis intervention counselor; a behavior analyst; and a paraprofessional. In the 2020-21 school year alone, the team made more than 7,000 student contacts and more than 2,300 parent contacts. They also conducted and managed 45 threat assessments and 183 suicide assessments. Exactly what support BESST offers varies by student. Some need just a few minutes with a crisis counselor, while others need high-touch, ongoing support. The team creates transition plans for students in crisis and trains staff and passes along the plan so that when the students reenter the classroom, they’re more likely to be successful. They do frequent reentry circles with kids. The team has also established Hope Squads on their secondary campuses, or students who are trained in suicide prevention strategies. “It’s layered, wraparound supports that we can provide at different levels of need for our students,” says Kady Donaghey, executive director of college, career and counseling for the district. These days, Donaghey spends about 40% of her work hours on counseling and other BESST duties. “Students just face so many different challenges now than they used to,” she says. “And especially, living through a pandemic has definitely impacted some of the students, so we’re seeing some of those fears, some of those challenges they see on a regular basis.”
For sixth to 12th graders, any student who leaves school to go to a mental health facility or who does a long stint in an alternative placement for behavior concerns will transition back to school through a BASE classroom. There, students receive half-day counseling and half-day academics to catch them back up to their peers. Around 175 to 200 of Weatherford’s 8,000 students received this level of support last school year. For pre-K to fifth grade students, the team focuses on trauma counseling and helping students develop the skills they need to succeed in school. “We were seeing lots of young kids, 4- and 5-year-olds, coming into school not having school-ready skills,” says Rife. “So these were kids who had really experienced trauma in their life for whatever reason. And what we know from research is that trauma for young kids really impacts brain development.” The students were in constant fight-or-flight mode, which meant they were unable to learn. One of the first steps the team took was to take all administrative duties away from elementary school counselors — these counselors no longer do any 504 meetings or testing, just counseling. “You have to have all hands on deck,” Rife says. “You have to have people whose sole responsibility is to go in, stabilize the kid, figure out what’s going on with this kid, what does this kid need to be successful in school.” The district funds the BESST program locally, and also uses some of their federal dollars to support it. It’s clear that the investment has paid huge dividends. Today, the district’s data has shown that students who otherwise would not have been able to graduate have been put back on a path of success in school. But statistics are one thing; the real-life impact of the program plays out one student at a time. District Superintendent Beau Rees describes a situation last spring where BESST was working with a student, and through that work discovered that his younger brother was having some unrelated issues that needed to be addressed as well. “He had not made an outcry and hadn’t really been seen as needing support,” Rees says. “They were able to intervene early, head off some issues, and help a sibling before their behaviors escalated.” To Rees, it’s moments like that that prove the program is helping — not just individuals, but families. For other districts interested in adopting a similar program, Rees recommends evaluating the district’s goals against how they’re currently reaching out to students in crisis. Districts must be willing to increase the number of counselors on staff, he says, and change the role they’re playing to help students and families. He invites districts to reach out to him for information and resources. Changing the response to mental health crises in Weatherford ISD didn’t happen overnight. The first two years of the program, much of the team’s work involved getting the message out to the community that the district cared about the mental health and social well-being of kids. They had to change school culture. These days, Weatherford students know: “Having mental health concerns or issues is no different than getting the flu or being diabetic,” said Rife. “And we’re going to have supports in place for you no matter what.”
LEILA KALMBACH is a freelance writer and habits coach for solopreneurs.
