Fulton schools focus on mental health

Fulton High School.
Fulton High School.

Two years after the passage of Proposition K, Fulton Public Schools has a team of social workers and mental health professionals better prepared to meet student's needs.

"We're just blessed by the fact that coming off a pandemic, we were in a place to have this much support for our buildings," Crain said.

In 2018, Fulton voters approved Proposition K, an increase of the operating levy to help maintain funding for special needs and mental health services. Before, FPS relied on a federal grant to bring in a school psychologist and professional counselors.

Now, Fulton Public Schools has three full-time and one part-time social workers on staff.

"I think we're finally at a point now where we're starting to reap some of those benefits from Proposition K beyond the additional support to put out fires and handle emergencies - we're maybe starting to turn a corner where we can be more proactive with students," Superintendent Ty Crain said. "They are finally in the building and they're getting ahead with kids from the start of the school year, identifying and building relationships."

The district's investment in mental health reflects a greater trend in education across the country.

"When I was in school and when I first started teaching, you didn't talk about mental health," Student Services Coordinator Debbie Harris said. "It was kind of a taboo subject."

Harris has worked at Fulton Public Schools for 42 years - first as a teacher and then as a counselor before she stepped into her current role. Towards the end of her time as a counselor, Harris said people began talking about mental health more.

"If you look at any of the professional development out there or the conferences out there, trauma-informed schools has become a very big push over the last three or five years," Crain said. "It all comes back to the fact that we are recognizing that our students when they come to school, a lot of them are coming with things in their lives that have caused trauma that affects the way that the learn, the way they behave, their ability to form relationships, their ability to socialize with their peers."

The focus on mental health isn't radical - research has consistently linked physical and mental health to academic success.

"It kind of goes back to when people talk about providing breakfasts and lunches because you have to meet those basic needs of students," Crain said. "Feeding into that, before they're ever ready to learn you have to be able to address that mental health and behavior that might be coming from trauma."

How each community and school deals with mental health resources varies, but Crain said it is common for districts of Fulton's size to hire social workers in some capacity.

The district has emphasized the importance of mental health to staff through professional development.

"Teachers have been very responsive of letting us know when they notice that something's off or if they've got concerns about a student," Harris said.

Several times a year, the district conducts mental health screening through the Social, Academic, and Emotional Behaviour Risk Screener which includes both teacher and student self-assessments. This helps identify students who might need additional support and allows the district to compare and contrast between the beginning and end of the school year.

"In the school setting, we have a better understanding of the relationship between mental health, student achievement and even school safety," Harris said. "The desire to support our students and staff kind of led to our introduction of Prop K a couple of years ago to provide additional mental health services for our students."

Without social workers on staff, dealing with mental health would fall onto the shoulders of school counselors - but counselors don't have the same training.

"We have a lot of students coming in who have trauma or serious diagnosed or undiagnosed mental health issues that our counselors alone, one, weren't trained for, and two, don't have time for while they're also trying to do the job they've always done," Crain said.

According to a May update Harris gave to the Board of Education, last year, the district recorded 186 crisis calls - at lease one from every building in the district. Thirty students were hospitalized for severe behaviour issues, depression, suicide ideation or suicide attempts.

Along with emergencies, social workers help connect families to resources in the community. Harris's May report noted the team has done everything from helping connect families to food and rental assistance to toilet paper and diapers.

The team works with groups like the Arthur Center, the Department of Mental Health, Rainbow House and Compass Health in Columbia and hospitals. Staff have also attended meetings of the Children's Division, Juvenile Office and Fulton Housing Authority related to FPS students.

"No two days are alike, every day is different," Harris said. "And every day is directed by what our students need."