‘A critical need’: Birmingham City Schools uses money from city to support student mental health needs during pandemic

Students and staff have faced serious mental health challenges in Birmingham City Schools, said Courtney Nelson, director of Social and Emotional Learning at BCS. Teachers and students alike have also faced pandemic and social justice challenges, while being expected to be efficient students and teachers.

Following the approval of the Birmingham City Council in September, Mayor Randall Woodfin’s office donated $1 million to Student Support Services at BCS to give full-time emotional support to students and staff.

“It’s very important and very much needed, and we’re very thankful that the mayor thought enough of the district to provide the funds for us to do that,” Guidance and Counseling Coordinator Taqua Lewis said. “We have a multitiered system of support for our district, and as a whole, the counselor is the first responder in all cases. That counselor speaks with the student and from there, determines if that student then proceeds ‘up the ladder,’ let’s say, to receive more direct services.”

Before the donation was made, Nelson said, City Council members were also concerned with the rates of suicide among students, specifically African American female students.

The donation provides schools with full-time counseling services and MANDT System training, a program designed to educate teachers about how to best help students with their mental health in the classroom, Nelson said.

Maria Lyas-Young, coordinator of multitiered systems of support, positive behavior intervention support and Section 504 for student support services, said the responsibilities of on-campus counselors will include appraisal and advisement, referrals, counseling — recognizing and responding to students that have mental health needs — consultation, and collaboration with parents, staff and the community.

“It’s important to recognize that while we all collaboratively work together, we must have first responders that can identify things that our students need,” Lyas-Young said.

“What we know about mental health is that one in five children are struggling with some sort of mental health concerns, statistically,” Nelson said. “You could have 20 children or four or five sitting in that classroom and one is going to need that counseling support. It’s too critical of a need.”

In the past, several BCS schools have had to share counselors, being only able to use the counselors that the state provides, Lewis said. She said the majority of the money from the grant will be used to make sure that each school has a full-time counselor, all the time, to be a “first responder” in crisis situations and address any mental health needs.

“Of course, with all of the trauma that students have experienced throughout the pandemic, the idea of having a part-time counselor doesn’t really meet the needs of all of the students because the counselor may not be at a school while a student is in crisis,” Lewis said. “Therefore, if a student is in crisis and if the counselor’s not there, then there has to be some other plan in place for someone to provide the correct service for that particular student.”

The MANDT System, created by psychologist David Mandt, will provide school staff with both emotional and behavioral support, evidence-based techniques for de-escalation and the foundation for teachers to build healthy relationships with students in the classroom, Nelson said.

Required attendees of the training include the principal or assistant principal, one school counselor, two teachers and one support staff member, such as a nurse or a custodian.

The five attendees that received the MANDT System training, she said, will be the first responders in crisis situations.

“It’s important that we acknowledge that sometimes students connect with a custodian, cafeteria worker or school nurse,” Nelson said. “It isn’t always going to be someone that’s in the classroom with them everyday, so we need to make sure that we include them as well.”

Staff members will require documentation to prove they attended the training via a sign-in sheet and other materials from training and are expected to share what they’ve learned from the training, Nelson said.

“We think it’s important that when you attend training, [teachers] coming back and redelivering to [their] colleagues is critical if we’re going to see implementation,” Nelson said.

BCS staff and their families will also have access to mental health resources via the Employee Assistance Program (EAP), which offers short-term counseling and assessments, said Shelia Williams, counselor and coordinator of the EAP.

Williams said the EAP is a “voluntary, work-based program that offers free and confidential assessments, short-term counseling of 10 sessions per year, referrals and follow-up services to employees who have personal or work-related problems.”

BCS will use ESI, a company based in Wellsville, New York, that specializes in EAPs for the workplace, as its vendor for EAP services, Williams said.

“We’ve got to set up the processes in the school that support the children and identify these risk factors and then we’ve got to make sure that we align them to the correct supports because if their mental health is not okay, they are not available to learn in the classroom,” Nelson said.