EASTHAMPTON — The school district’s counseling team will add three more people to its cadre after securing more than $161,000 in funding from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.
As students have returned back to school for in-person learning after 18 months of isolation and learning through a computer screen, Easthampton school administrators say they have noticed high levels of emotional dysregulation throughout the district. Many students have been experiencing so much anxiety that they’ve been unable to get through a day of school without falling apart, said Julie Anne Levin, director of curriculum/grants and diversity coordinator for the district.
“We are seeing unprecedented levels of need for social emotional support from students coming back from remote learning,” Levin said. “The pandemic has only heightened the importance of social-emotional and behavioral health well-being.”
Superintendent Allison LeClair said although the district has exemplary counselors, there just aren’t enough to meet the current demand.
“It’s desperately needed,” LeClair said at a recent School Committee meeting.
The state education department’s social-emotional learning and mental health grant program is designed to adapt, expand or strengthen multi-tiered support systems to enable school districts like Easthampton to respond to the health needs of its students, families and educators, as well as help build strong partnerships with community-based mental health agencies and providers.
Levin said the district learned of the grant opportunity after a handful of staff attended a social-emotional learning and mental health academy provided by the national nonprofit Education Development Center and Boston-based education and youth development nonprofit Transforming Education.
“The district already had ideas in place, so that when we were made aware of this grant opportunity, we found that they aligned with the grant expectations,” she said.
The Easthampton School District was awarded a total of $161,683 to support access to services and implement universal screening for mental health. The money will fund two positions at the high school: a licensed adjustment counselor and a para-educator. Interviews for the positions will begin in the next couple weeks, Levin said. According to the posting, the estimated start date is Sept. 1.
The adjustment counselor will provide more individualized support, whereas the para-educator will work in more of a “drop-in” therapeutic setting that will allow a student to grab a snack and try and de-escalate.
In addition to the two high school positions, the grant will fund another social-emotional learning coordinator next year who will work with students in kindergarten through eighth grade and coordinate the implementation of universal mental health screening.
“That gives us a staffing structure across all grade levels for focusing on the social-emotional learning and mental health needs of all students,” Levin said. “This is a big step forward for the district!”
The K-8 social-emotional learning coordinator position will be funded in the following year as a full-time position through the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund, which was established as part of the American Rescue Plan Act to provide school districts with funding to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The school district has received $1,615,282 in Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funding, with about $260,000 allocated specifically to all three social-emotional learning and mental health positions over the 2023-24 school year, Levin said.
While DESE’s social emotional learning and mental health grant program will fund the establishment of the first two positions at the high school, the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund will help sustain all three new positions for the next two following years.
To continue the positions past June 2024, the district will need new grant money or to transfer the positions to the local budget.
State Rep. Dan Carey, D-Easthampton, said that he hopes that grants like this will continue to be available.
“This pandemic has had such a negative effect on schools,” Carey said. “This need is not going to disappear anytime soon.”
Emily Thurlow can be reached at ethurlow@ gazettenet.com.
