BOE Hears Progress On Mental Health Initiative – My veronanj

Calling Veronas student mental health initiative one of the most important things that Verona has done, Director of Special Services Frank Mauriello told the Board of Educations Tuesday meeting that the district has made significant progress in addressing mental health issues since the mental health ballot question passed. The initiative, Mauriello said, has gotten students and their families the support they need, raised grades and lowered absenteeism, while reducing Child Study Team caseloads to more manageable levels. He also said that the students who have met with mental health professionals through the program have learned coping skills that are enabling them to address some new situations without additional intervention.

To get Veronas initiative off the ground, Mauriello said, the district had to overcome four barriers: limited financial resources, culture issues, a lack of acceptance of mental health issues, and a lack of specialized staffing. He thanked the community for approving the dedicated funding for mental health services in 2018, and thanked the volunteers on two action committees whose work in 2017 made the mental health ballot question possible. Superintendent Dr. Rui Dionisio created the committees in the wake of a student death by suicide. (This reporter served on one of the action committees and is the mother of the child who died.)

Verona has drawn on four main programs for its mental health initiative: Effective School Solutions, which is providing the district with licensed social workers; Peekapak, social emotional learning curriculum for K-4 students; and Positive Behavior Support in Schools (PBSIS) a collaboration between the New Jersey Department of Education Office of Special Education and The Boggs Center, Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School that supports a range of school intervention needs. The collaboration has expanded mental health counseling to the elementary schools, and has added to the resources at H.B. Whitehorne Middle School and Verona High School.

Mauriello said there is a growing mental health epidemic among K-12 students, which he called the invisible disability, with some 17% of students nationwide now showing mental health issues. He noted that it can take an average of 11 years for a person who has been diagnosed with a mental health issue to get appropriate treatment, and said that one of Veronas goals is to make that shorter for Veronas students. Mauriello noted that Verona has developed a relationship with St. Clares Hospital in Denville that is making it possible for Verona students to get a mental health evaluation in 24 to 48 hours and not the two weeks that it often takes.

Veronas mental health initiative has earned the district local, state and national recognition, said Mauriello, who noted that he and Dr. Dionisio had presented to a national conference of superintendents in San Diego earlier in February. We are not the only people struggling with this epidemic, he said.

You can watch Mauriellos presentation in the video below, view his slide deck here and learn more about Veronas mental health and wellness programs through the districts website.

In other business at the BOE meeting, Dr. Dionisio noted that Verona had achieved an exceptionally low 2.12% rate on the bonds that will be issued to finance this years referendum work, which will translate into a $2.2 million savings for taxpayers.

Dionisio said that New Jersey will release its school aid numbers on Thursday, and that this years outlook seems promising since Gov. Phil Murphy has promised to invest an additional $336 million in K-12 education statewide, as well as $1.1 billion to close the shortfall in the states teacher pension fund. Dionisio said that he expects to have a preliminary Verona school budget on March 20, which will be voted on at the BOEs second April meeting after public presentations.

Dionisio also noted that Verona will have three retirements this year: Diane Newman, the assistant in the VHS guidance department, VHS art teacher Terry Sherman and middle school science teacher Carol Thomas, who was also Dionisios seventh grade science teacher.

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BOE Hears Progress On Mental Health Initiative - My veronanj