Five ways we’re supporting the mental health of BVSD students and educators

Supporting the mental health of our students and educators is a critical need for our community. Impact on Education is committed to helping the Boulder Valley School District provide mental health support for students from kindergarten through graduation, and providing opportunities for educators to help both students and themselves. Having school-based support is critical to navigating mental health struggles and we’ve made five key investments in mental health so far this year:

Professional development for BVSD School Age Care staff

November 2021 and August 2022

School Age Care (SAC) supervisors and assistant supervisors serve a diverse group of students daily at 32 sites throughout Boulder Valley School District (BVSD). From grade levels to academic ability levels to emotional and behavioral health levels, SAC staff must manage each student’s needs and create a safe environment outside of school hours for students and staff. 

Impact on Education worked with Calming Kids to provide targeting professional development to 72 SAC staff who work with students before and after school. Participants gained self-regulation skills and learned how to better equip themselves to provide social-emotional support for all students.

RESeT Fairview Day

January 2022  |  Daily Camera article (paywall)

Fairview High School paused instruction for one day (January 7, 2022) and offered a day of conferences that focused on four areas: prevention/education, mental health, self care and leadership.

RESeT Fairview Day was a student-led conference funded by Impact on Education that allowed students to engage in a variety of training and learning activities. There were five sessions of over 40 presentations throughout the day making the content accessible to over 2,000 students. 

Four new BVSD Mental Health Advocates

May 2022  |  Daily Camera article (paywall)

Impact on Education provided funding for BVSD to hire four mental Health Advocate positions in the spring of 2022, a few months after the Marshall Fire. Within BVSD, Mental Health Advocates provide prevention and intervention services for students, supporting their social-emotional and behavioral development, student achievement, and crisis intervention.

Mental Health Advocates can also provide both group and individual counseling support and work directly with students, parents, and staff members. For more acute counseling needs, they help families access external resources for mental health. As a direct result of the Marshall Fire and the mental health impacts this is having on our community, we are working to immediately increase the mental health services available to BVSD students.

The four new Mental Health Advocates are assigned to the seven schools most directly impacted by the Marshall Fire, supporting 6,061 students. They’ve collectively expanded access to mental health services by 35%, providing over 130 consultations and offering direct support and services to 93 families and 359 individuals. 

Professional development for BVSD educators

November 2022

The mental health of educators and school staff directly impacts the students in their classrooms. Through our Academic Opportunity Fund we were able to fund two school requests to support mental health needs at their schools.

At Monarch PK-8, Beth Kelley, author of Teaching, Learning and Trauma, will conduct two professional learning sessions focused on helping‌ ‌teachers‌ ‌respond‌ ‌to‌ ‌students‌ ‌who‌ ‌are‌ ‌dysregulated‌, strategies‌ ‌to‌ ‌avoid‌ ‌retriggering‌ students‌, and identifying ‌‌where‌ ‌students are ‌in‌ ‌their‌ ‌own‌ ‌transition, grief, or trauma‌. Beth also joined sessions for students dealing with trauma and worked directly with students experiencing higher levels of trauma.

We also provided funding for Centaurus High School to improve school wide behavior interventions targeted at addressing school culture, supporting psychological needs and addressing truancy through the Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) lens. 

All Advocates for All Youth program 

Program launches in 2023

In partnership with Dr. Jill Kaar, a behavioral epidemiologist at CU-Anschutz Medical School, Impact on Education is supporting the implementation of the All Advocates for All Youth (ALLY) program in several Boulder Valley middle schools. 

The ALLY program pairs community volunteers with middle school students for six 1:1 sessions. The discussions will provide students with a mental health curriculum that includes a common vocabulary around behavioral health, destigmatizing mental health intervention, and supporting emotional wellness.

BEFORE YOU GO …

Impact on Education is a nonprofit organization, and we depend on our community to help us put our mission into action. We need your help to to provide opportunity and resources to 30,000 students and 4,000 educators in the Boulder Valley School District.

IOE funding expands mental health support for BVSD students and staff

This post is an updated version of this article posted on February 25, 2022.

Children’s Hospital Colorado declared a pediatric mental health state of emergency in May of 2021, citing skyrocketing demand for mental health services among Colorado’s youth. In addition to the well-documented impact of the pandemic on mental health, our community also experienced a mass shooting and Colorado’s most destructive wildfire in 2021. 

BVSD is committed to providing mental health support for students from kindergarten through graduation. For young learners, sharing feelings and learning to work through problems will be all they ever know, and for older learners, having school-based support is critical to navigating mental health struggles.

We’re investing over $800,000 to support the ongoing mental health needs of students and staff throughout the Boulder Valley School District.

Mental health professional development for BVSD staff

School Age Care (SAC) staff serve a diverse group of students daily at 32 sites throughout Boulder Valley School District (BVSD). From grade levels to academic ability levels to emotional and behavioral health levels, SAC staff must manage each student’s needs and create a safe environment outside of school hours for students and staff.

Impact on Education funded six hours of Calming Kids professional development for BVSD School After Care educators to teach them strategies for managing student mental health needs and their own. The first sessions were held in 2021 thanks to a partnership with the City of Boulder’s Housing and Human Services Department, and additional sessions are planned for 2022.

Expanding BVSD’s team of mental health advocates

In the Boulder Valley School District (BVSD), referrals of students to Mental Health Advocates have risen by 86% this school year compared to the same period during the 2020-21 school year. 

Mental Health Advocates supplement what BVSD’s school counselors can provide since their focus is exclusively on mental and behavioral health. Within BVSD, Mental Health Advocates: 

• provide prevention and intervention services for students, supporting their social-emotional and behavioral development, student achievement, and crisis intervention
• provide both group and individual counseling support and work directly with students, parents, and staff members
• help families access external resources, including making appropriate referrals to community partners such as Mental Health Partners and Jewish Family Services

Impact on Education provided funding to hire four additional Mental Health Advocates to be deployed year-round in BVSD’s schools most impacted by the Marshall Fire. 

“We are seeing a significant increase when it comes to the social-emotional support our students need at this critical moment. Those impacted by the fire are working to process everything that happened. It was a deeply traumatic experience and it will take some time for these students to cope with the tremendous amount of loss and PTSD that everyone impacted by the fires are struggling through.”

Tammy Lawrence, Student Support Services Director

The additional support of four new Mental Health Advocates will ensure all of the schools impacted by the Marshall Fire have the intensive layer of mental health support needed, and expand BVSD’s capacity to respond to mental health referrals. 

The intensity of mental health concerns and the time required to provide support and intervention varies dramatically from case to case, but BVSD’s leadership is confident that adding these clinicians to the School District team was the most critical immediate step.

Funding to support mental health has come from our generous community partners

• Community Foundation Boulder County
• CDP Colorado Wildfires Recovery Fund
• AT&T
• United Healthcare
• Google
• City of Boulder Housing and Human Services Department

---

YOU CAN HELP …

Impact on Education is a nonprofit organization, and we depend on our community to help us put our mission into action. We are still actively raising funds to support the mental health needs of Boulder Valley students and staff. You can help by making a gift to support this work.

Increasing mental health support for students most affected by the Marshall Fire

Children’s Hospital Colorado declared a pediatric mental health state of emergency in May of 2021, citing skyrocketing demand for mental health services among Colorado’s youth. In addition to the well-documented impact of the pandemic on mental health, our community also experienced a mass shooting and Colorado’s most destructive wildfire in 2021. In the Boulder Valley School District (BVSD), referrals of students to Mental Health Advocates have risen by 86% this school year compared to the same period during the 2020-21 school year. 

What are mental health advocates?

Within BVSD, Mental Health Advocates provide prevention and intervention services for students, supporting their social-emotional and behavioral development, student achievement, and crisis intervention.

Mental Health Advocates can also provide both group and individual counseling support and work directly with students, parents, and staff members. For more acute counseling needs, they help families access external resources for mental health. As a direct result of the Marshall Fire and the mental health impacts this is having on our community, we are working to immediately increase the mental health services available to BVSD students.

Raising funds to expand BVSD’s team of mental health advocates

Impact on Education is actively seeking funding to facilitate hiring four additional Mental Health Advocates to be deployed in BVSD’s most impacted schools. The additional staff would be assigned to the 7 schools most directly impacted by the Marshall Fire, serving 6,061 students, 687 of whom lost their homes or remain displaced. With more than one in every ten students losing their homes and nearly all students at these schools impacted by the evacuation orders and trauma of temporary displacement, these are the schools with our most pressing mental health needs right now.

“We are seeing a significant increase when it comes to the social-emotional support our students need at this critical moment, those impacted by the fire are working to process everything that happened. It was a deeply traumatic experience and it will take some time for these students to cope with the tremendous amount of loss and PTSD that everyone impacted by the fires are struggling through.”

Tammy Lawrence, Student Support Services Director

The additional support will ensure all of the impacted schools have the intensive layer of mental health support needed, and expand BVSDs capacity to respond to mental health referrals. The intensity of mental health concerns and the time required to provide support and intervention varies dramatically from case to case, but BVSD’s leadership is confident that adding these clinicians to the School District team is the most critical immediate step.

Nearly half of the necessary funding was secured from a donation from the Community Foundation’s Boulder County Wildfire Fund and we are actively working with other funding partners to secure the balance of the required funding.

The importance of mental health support right now

Increasing mental health support to the students most affected by the Marshall Fire will benefit approximately 6,061 students in 7 of the 32 schools home to students impacted by the fire. BVSD’s Mental Health Advocates collaborate and make appropriate referrals to partners including Mental Health Partners and Jewish Family Services.

Mental Health Advocates supplement what BVSD’s school counselors can provide since their focus is exclusively on mental and behavioral health. They work directly with the administration in each school building to determine the needs, and then collaborate on what curriculum to use to meet individual students’ needs. This includes working in collaboration with school counselors to ensure there is a direct impact for each student, and extends into providing services to the teachers and staff who always play a key role in supporting the social-emotional health of the students.

District seeking additional mental health grants

Beyond their funding request to Impact on Education, BVSD is requesting two emergency grants, one state and one federal, to provide additional mental health staffing and support to schools most impacted by the Marshall Fire.

“We are tremendously grateful for the support of Impact on Education and our entire community, as we work to provide support for those impacted. This is not a situation that will be resolved in days or weeks. We must be ready to help our fellow neighbors for the many months and years it will take to not only rebuild, to once again feel safe and to return to normalcy.”

Dr. Rob Anderson, BVSD Superintendent

Read more about BVSD’s plans to hire school counselors, nurses, and outreach positions in this story from the Daily Camera.

---

YOU CAN HELP …

Impact on Education is a nonprofit organization, and we depend on our community to help us put our mission into action. We are still actively raising funds to support the mental health needs of Boulder Valley students and staff. You can help by making a gift to support this work. On the donation form, where it says “My donation is for” please select “Critical Needs Fund – Marshall Fire.”

Student After Care (SAC) Supervisors and Assistant Supervisors serve a diverse group of students daily at 32 sites throughout Boulder Valley School District (BVSD). From grade levels to academic ability levels to emotional and behavioral health levels, SAC staff must manage each student’s needs and create a safe environment outside of school hours for students and staff.

To help SAC staff manage student needs and their own, we’ve partnered with the City of Boulder’s Housing and Human Services Department to invest $25,000 so two employees from each site can obtain 6 hours of professional development in Calming Kids Mindfulness and Yoga.

What is Calming Kids?

The Calming Kids training will introduce balancing the physical body, calming the energetic body and becoming mindful of thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Easy exercises to loosen the body, breathing practices, and relaxation techniques will be presented for staff to instruct students, as well as, how these tools can support the adult teacher.

Yoga and mindfulness education for the classroom setting provides strategies to support social-emotional wellness and brain integration. Participants will learn a curriculum for elementary age students enabling them to teach and model techniques for students, to assist with academic performance and cultivate a greater capacity for a compassionate community.

Benefits of mental health training

These training sessions will teach SAC supervisory staff how to regulate their own emotions amidst challenging situations and how to teach strategies for students to self-regulate within these same challenging situations.

What happens before and after school impacts the learning and experiences during the school day and at home.

Providing professional development in this area of mindfulness and social-emotional health also signals to SAC staff how much they are valued and appreciated. Our goal is to empower SAC staff with tools they need to succeed and build confidence in their abilities to do their job of taking care of our students outside of the school day.

Future investments

We are committed to meeting the social-emotional needs of BVSD students and educators and continue to seek out ways we can support this integral part of education in Boulder Valley’s schools.

Connect with Us