School system aims to build students' resiliency

Newton-Conover City Schools is testing a program it hopes will lead to increased graduation rates, test scores and improved teacher morale. "It's less expensive to build resilience than to respond to its absence," Catawba County Manager Mary Furtado told the Catawba County Board of Commissioners at a workshop to discuss a safe and healthy community on Monday. The pilot program in the Newton-Conover City Schools will seek to bolster resilience among children who may deal with difficult childhood experiences, Furtado said.

Furtado cited low educational attainment in all of the county's schools as evidence of the need for the program. "The key to solving these ACEs (adverse childhood experiences) is building resilient children, building resilient community," Catawba County Opioid and Substance Use Disorder Program Coordinator Jamie Todd said. "We know that someone with two or more ACEs has a far greater chance to have substance use disorders, violence .



.. as they get older.

So if we get them at a young age, help them learn how to deal with those adverse childhood experiences with resilience, then, hopefully, we can stop them from going into that cycle of substance use and violence." Newton-Conover City Schools Associate Superintendent Beth Penley laid out a plan the school system is piloting to help children overcome outside experiences affecting them in school. The school system is working to show that better communication among staff and collaboration with area agencies will lead to better educational outcomes.

A key part of the plan involves a system of support, where at-risk students receive supports aimed to keep them in the classroom and not cause disruptions. "A multi-tiered system of support means you're building supports based on the risk level with the goal of having as many kids mainstreamed (in the general education classroom) as possible so that the teachers can focus on teaching and other people can focus on dealing with these risk levels," Furtado said. Penley said based on needs, atrisk students will receive instruction on modifying their behavior and learning coping strategies to deal with frustrations.

Penley said staff will also receive training on differentiating support for students with different learning styles. To fund the pilot program, the county commissioners agreed to provide money for a school psychologist for student services to help students in need of more community supports and behavioral interventions. The county will also provide money for a part-time community outreach coordinator who will work with students and families to connect them with needed community resources.

The two positions will be funded by $80,000 from the opioid settlement fund. County commissioners approved the pilot program in a three-to-two vote.Commissioners Randy Isenhower, Austin Allran and Barbara Beatty voted in favor while commissioners Cole Setzer and Robert Abernethy voted against funding the program.

After the meeting, commissioners Setzer and Abernethy said they wanted more information about the program. "I wasn't prepared to vote yes for it," Abernethy said. "The role of psychologist and how much leniency they're going to be given with counseling these students and if (the counseling) will be pre-approved by parents, I didn't get to ask all those questions.

...

Had I gotten all those answers ahead of time I might could have voted yes on it." Billy Chapman is a reporter with the Hickory Daily Record. wchapman@hickoryrecord.

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