School Districts Must Implement Multiple Intervention Programs for the Sake of Our Children, Parents, and Society - Part II

POSTED BY DESERT CRONE

In Wednesday’s post I discussed some of my own background and that of the Student Assistance System (SAS). Also, I explained how the program was financed. This post will take you through the creation of a SAS school-based assessment and intervention teams. Subsequent posts will also discuss the nuts and bolts of other aspects of a SAS. My hope is that parents, teachers, administrators, school board members, or anyone interested in the welfare of children will be able to use these posts as a guide to creating a SAS in their districts.

As I stated in the first post, I was prompted to write this series by the decision of the Obama administration to investigate and possibly eliminate disciplinary policies that prevent students from receiving an education, punitive actions such as expulsion from school or extensive stays in detention or in-school suspension,. The Dept. of Justice refers to these disciplinary actions as “Schools to Prisons.” My impression after reading the report is that it lacks an early intervention piece, a method to identify students well before the serious misbehavior begins. The beauty of the SAS is that at-risk students are identified early and receive prevention services. Another benefit of an SAS is the reduction of discipline problems in the classroom, allowing the teacher to focus on academics rather than classroom management. Most importantly is the fact that countless lives of children and teens will be saved and families healed.

Before any SAS is put into place, CARE Teams need to be trained and established at every school. These teams are not to be confused with academic assessment teams. While the CARE Teams are drawing up the most effective referral, assessment, and intervention plans for their schools, other staff should be going through the SAS training so every school has a handful of SAS advocates. Eventually, every single person on the staff, from the principal to the custodian should be trained.

Once the CARE Teams are in place and the faculty educated on the purpose of the team, every staff person should be given blank referral forms. The referral form should focus on risky behaviors only, not speculation about students’ alcohol/drug use. Referrals can come from any staff member. They simply fill out the referral form and give it to a team member. In the meantime the CARE Teams need to identify and train staff who would make good student group facilitators.

Additionally, each team needs to identify all the referral services in the community and the school district. Remember that the function of the CARE Teams is not to serve as a referral system for students with learning difficulties but only for students with behavioral problems. Of course, both issues do go hand-in-hand more often than not. Frequently, the two different teams should meet and discuss the students who have been referred to both teams and assign students to one team or the other or work jointly on particular students. Again, training of staff should continue, but I will discuss the details of the training in Part III. Initially many teachers on the staff who will complain about the extra paperwork (and who can blame them) will experience a complete turnaround after the training. Garnering support of 90% or more of a school’s staff guarantees the success of the SAS at every school.

Soon student referrals will come into the CARE Team, and members will hand deliver the one-page behavior check list to every one of the student’s teachers plus school secretaries, nurse, counselor, aids, and custodians. Secrecy about the referrals is repeatedly stressed to the staff as well as the need to avoid speculation about reasons for a referral. Other members will check current academic progress as well as checking on the history of the student’s academic performance. Others will look into the disciplinary records of every referred student and interview the school counselor, nurse, and principal for family history and insights into the student’s behavior, attitude, etc. Students who are referred are assigned a case manager within the team so it is likely that team members will certainly have more than one student.

After as much personal information is collected, a file is opened on the student and a case manager is assigned. The CARE Team has a locked, fire-proof file cabinet, and the key is in the possession of the team leader. Absolutely no one but team members will have access to the files. If a student leaves the district, the file is shredded. Otherwise, the file moves from school to school as the student moves until s/he no longer needs SAS services or graduates from high school. Team members strictly follow HIPPA guidelines and never discuss students outside of the team meetings. In fact, one difficulty team members will face is questioning by staff about progress of the student’s referral or the final referral decision. Balancing between the staff’s need to know and the student’s right to privacy can be like walking a tight rope.

When a decision is reached about where to refer a student—to an outside mental health program, addiction program, school-based support group, etc—the parents and their child are invited to attend a conference (some might say an intervention) with the case manager and team leader. The team members are careful to explain that the SAS is not a punitive program, but a support system. After the history and current behaviors/academic progress or lack thereof is discussed, a recommendation is made to the parents. The recommendation might be to outside counseling service, the school’s social worker, or school-based support group. The process from beginning to end should never take longer than a month.

Some students will simply be put on hold because there is not enough information to make a referral; however, the students’ behavior and grades will be monitored by occasionally asking staff to fill out another referral form. Other students find their way into the SAS because of discipline problems, which is the topic of another post.

That is the basic structure of the CARE Teams, their function, and training. Creating CARE Team at each school is a school district is the essential first step in establishing an effective SAS. I’m sure I’ve omitted many details, but I hope those details will be brought to light in the comments section. In Part III, I will discuss what the training is like, and how the training can serve as an intervention on a school’s entire staff.

School Districts Must Implement Multiple Intervention Programs for the Sake of Our Children, Parents, and Society

POSTED BY DESERT CRONE

This is the first post in a series on why the Dept. of Justice and Dept. of Education must do more than just end schools rules that expel students who misbehave and what school districts can do to keep kids in school.

Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan today announced the launch of the Supportive School Discipline Initiative, a collaborative project between the Departments of Justice and Education that will address the “school-to-prison pipeline” and the disciplinary policies and practices that can push students out of school and into the justice system. The initiative aims to support good discipline practices to foster safe and productive learning environments in every classroom.

While I admire their initiative to keep kids in school, their action must be accompanied by multiple intervention programs. This is a very long post, so I do hope you will hang in there and read it in its entirety because I think it will be very enlightening.

First, to understand why I believe in interventions as an essential companion piece with ending expulsion, I’ll tell you a little bit about my life. I was a teacher for about 12 years when I attended a three-day training to help teachers identify students who have addiction issues. What I had to look at, however, during the training was my own alcoholism and addiction. I came home from the first day and told my husband I was an alcoholic and asked him to pour out all the booze, which he did. He said to me, “You damn well better be an alcoholic because I just poured out $300 worth of booze.” I discovered later that the Director of the Student Assistance System (SAS) put me and my girlfriend/drinking buddy in the training, knowing we were drunks and hoping the training would serve as an intervention. Well, damn him, it worked. We both celebrated our 25th sobriety birthday together in April.

It’s about this place in my story when folks congratulate me, but I will not take any credit for my recovery. My 25 years is due solely to my Higher Power and Alcoholics Anonymous. Prior to my epiphany, every Sunday my family dragged me to small liberal church, hangover and all. One Sunday morning I prayed to God for help with my drinking. I didn’t want to stop drinking, just stop the hangovers. Two days later I was in the training and one week later, almost dead, I was sitting in a treatment center saying, “Hi, I’m Desert Crone, and I’m an alcoholic. (Words of wisdom: Be careful for what you pray for and never ever pray for patience.)

Anyway, after the director resigned a few years later, I was appointed to his position. I left the classroom and ran the program for five years. Dealing with addicted kids and their broken families is physically and emotionally draining, so I eventually went back into the classroom, knowing my experience would make me a better, more compassionate and empathetic teacher. (BTW the first students I taught are now 56 years old. Eeeek!) When you have battled alcoholism, nothing much else scares you. So when I went back into the classroom, I was a loud, persistent advocate for students. I took on fellow teachers who weren’t teaching, principals, and school boards. After I retired, I was elected to the local school board where I continued my advocacy for students, My missions as a student advocate is one of the reasons I decided to write this post.

But I digress. I went all out in making the SAS a formidable program that served as many students as humanly possible. Sometimes I went all out with reckless abandon, which generally got me in all kinds of trouble. Looking back on my directorship, I realize now I probably went into it too new in my sobriety. Water under the bridge . . . .

To give you an example of what is possible within a school district, let me explain the financing. First, the district had the most amazing superintendent for whom I have ever worked. He taught me how to write grants so I was able to secure $500,000 dollars to run the program. Most came from state grants and Drug Free Schools, but a small portion came from the district budget and the training and consulting fees I charged other school districts. From 1987-1993 I trained aides, teachers, secretaries, custodians, and administrators from southern Colorado to NM districts and even Oklahoma. I charged $400/day plus expenses. I also trained almost every single staff person in our district over a period of five years.

My staff consisted of one secretary and a therapist, my friend who shares my sobriety birthday. All three of us were and still are in recovery. In AA we believe in sharing our experiences, strengths, and hopes, qualities that made us effective with kids and their parents. They always knew we were not critical of them because we were like them. (Of course, an SAS program can be capably run by people in recovery.) I was able to operate with a staff of two plus myself because we trained staff to assess and place students in support groups and facilitate groups. The SAS was a K-12 program in a school district with over 4000 students so running it with three people was an extraordinary challenge, but it can be done.

By the fifth year, the program had identified and placed 750 students in support groups, such as Children of Alcoholics, prevention, anger, rape victim, recovery, in-patient and out-patient programs, and parents in parent support groups, and multi-family therapy groups with their children. Also, we had implemented K-8 prevention curriculum and peer training in all secondary schools. Whew! What a task to keep those going, but we did we enthusiastic help from a majority of district staff. After the first year as director, drug use had dropped by 18%, the only NM district that actually showed a drop in drug use rather than an increase. The drop-out rate dropped from 17% to 11%. By the fifth year the District showed even more significant drops in both.

Programs that prevent students from dropping out generally pay for themselves in just a few years. Since most states have student-based funding, the more students that stay in school the larger the overall budget. But, more importantly, such a program saves kids and their parents. Believe me, once you have saved a child, his/her parents become the greatest advocates for the district.

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