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Altoona Area weighs mental health initiative

The Altoona Area School Board plans to vote on contracting with the Association of Clinical Research Professionals in March for a high-level mental health program for high school students.

Special Education Director Sherri Campbell piloted the program in district elementary schools since January 2017.

“The elementary program has been a great success,” she said. “Secondary students are in need of this programming.”

In addition, Campbell recommended hiring one social worker for emotional support population as well as one emotional support instructor at the junior high and one at the senior high school.

The emotional support and emotionally disturbed student populations at Altoona Area are above state average, Campbell said Tuesday at a meeting.

The high emotional-needs population affects the already-strapped school counselor staff that is below the recommended student-counselor ratio.

The American School Counselor Association recommends a 250-to-1 student-counselor ratio; Altoona’s ratio is 300-to-1. But the national average is 482-to-1, according to the association’s website.

“It would be nice to have more guidance counselors,” board member Dave Francis said.

Superintendent Charles Prijatelj said high-need students take up a lot of guidance counselor time.

The emotional support specialists that would be hired would take some of the burden off the counselors who are tasked with seeing the whole student population.

“Two counselors per grade, a 300-to-1 ratio. That’s a lot.” Francis said.

Prijatelj said the emotional support staff should make a “huge difference in the climate, but yes, (Francis) is correct. Our counselors are strapped.”

And the high school dropout rate may have improved, but it’s still a regular occurrence. And students with mental health issues are the ones who drop out, Campbell said.

“Students are dropping out almost on a daily basis,” Campbell said. “Students talk about dropping out as early as sixth-grade. I spend a lot of time at the Blair courthouse: truancy meetings, working diligently with families, mental health needs in parents. A lot of it has stemmed from home environment.”

Hiring a social worker is key, Campbell said.

“We can add this for little cost. You can recover the cost of their work through the federal medical access program. There is a need for connection between homes and schools. Getting that trust and bond with families. It is important for us to make that connection. I made 100 home visits since January last year.”

Again, Francis questioned, “Is one enough?”

Rick Hoover agreed. “That’s going to be a heavy load for one person,” Hoover said.

“Is one enough? I can’t say, ‘yes it’s enough.’ They are integral in urban districts like ours.”

Francis doesn’t mind spending money on mental health staff for students.

“If we are going to spend money, I want to spend it on this stuff. Maybe you need two social workers. I think the more the merrier, to tell you the truth,” Francis said.

Campbell recommended adding one, seeing how it works and then possibly adding more later.

All three of the new emotional needs hires are planned to be in next year’s budget. As a separate issue, the ACRP program is set to be implemented in March at the junior and senior high schools and will save taxpayer money on sending students with severe mental health needs to residential programs or partial hospitalization.

“It is for students who are unsuccessfully discharged from partial hospitalization. We are not equipped to provide intensive services. ACRP we would contract to do that,” Campbell said.

Currently, students go into residential placement outside the district, which means they are taken from their homes. In other cases, they may go to the alternative education for disruptive youth, where they don’t belong, Campbell said.

The cost of the ACRP program is not yet known as it would be defrayed by parents’ insurance. ACRP would give intense mental health outpatient therapy in the school setting.

“It’s been tremendously successful in elementary setting,” Campbell said.

However, it’s a medical program, so only parents can place their students in it. Sometimes parents opt not to go that route.

“We can’t force parents to do it,” Campbell said. And sometimes parents don’t have insurance.

“We’ve only had two elementary students out of 30 that did not have an insurance carrier that would approve that. We decided it would benefit the students. So we (the district) paid the tuition,” Campbell said.

The ACRP program would provides transition plans and support staff to reintegrate students in school after hospitalization.

“We want to do this for the older students because mental health issues are more prevalent as they grow up. With puberty comes a lot of mental health issues,” she said.

Currently at the elementary schools, Altoona Area is one of the only districts with the ACRP program.

“If this doesn’t work, you are talking about sending kids to residential treatment. In that case, students are taken from their homes,” Prijatelj said.

And the district pays for education at outside placement facilities. Prijatelj said for seven or eight high school placements, it costs $235 per day. But it would cost $100 for if the district provides the ACRP program.

“The price we pay to send them out is twice the cost of keeping them with ACRP. And they would be getting a higher-level program here,” he said.

At Altoona Area, emotional support children comprise 27 percent of the 1,000-plus student population. Of those children, about 70 students at the elementary level are in the ACRP program.

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