Richmond Community Schools increases attendance tracking, expands mental-health and case-management partnerships

Bridget Hazelbaker, Richmond Community Schools’ director of student support services, told the school board on April 23 that the district has tightened attendance tracking and is coordinating mental-health and other wraparound services through several community partners to reach students identified as at risk of dropping out.

Hazelbaker said the district now flags a student as a habitual truant after 10 unexcused absences and holds an attendance-intervention meeting at five unexcused absences. "The best place for kids to be is in schools," she said, adding that the district is working with attendance liaisons and the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office where required. Hazelbaker reported that Richmond High School had 43 students marked as habitual truants in the first-semester data she reviewed.

The board heard that Centerstone provides free, school-based mental-health therapy and case reports to the district; "there's no cost to Richmond Community Schools for our Centerstone services," Hazelbaker said. She also described Meridian Health Services’ school-based health clinic at Richmond High School and said Meridian currently bills Medicaid and grant funding for its work.

The presentation outlined how the district’s monthly multi‑disciplinary meetings bring principals, site coordinators, mental‑health clinicians, attendance liaisons and other staff together to review data on grades, attendance, office referrals and child‑welfare contacts. Hazelbaker said staff look for patterns such as mobility, multiple Department of Child Services interactions, and whether students receive community services.

District staff flagged a gap with Communities In Schools (CIS), the nonprofit that provides site coordinators and case management under an MOU. Hazelbaker said the district identified 414 Richmond students with high or moderate risk attributes but that, at one point in the spring, only 54 of those students were listed as case‑managed by CIS; CIS later provided a list showing 239 students being served districtwide. Hazelbaker said some CIS site coordinator positions have been vacant and that the district increased hours for several coordinator positions (from 20 to 30 hours per week at Crestdale, Westview and Charles) to try to improve coverage.

Handle With Care, a first‑responder notification system that alerts schools when students have experienced recent potentially traumatic incidents, delivered 435 notifications to the district between September and April, Hazelbaker said. She showed that 305 students had one notification and that one student had received 15 Handle With Care notifications in the year-to-date data.

Board members asked for follow-up detail on outcomes and referrals. A member asked whether attendance data were disaggregated by grade; Hazelbaker said ten‑ and 11th‑grade students had higher concentrations of habitual truancy in the high‑school data she reviewed. Members also raised questions about enforcement: Hazelbaker said the district sends eventual-truant information to the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office but that prosecution and other remedies are handled by outside agencies.

Several board members and staff discussed next steps, including giving CIS clearer lists of at‑risk students earlier in the school year, mentoring and onboarding for new CIS coordinators, and pursuing grant or outside funding to fill gaps in portable AEDs and other safety equipment mentioned later in the meeting. The presentation closed with Hazelbaker saying district attendance rates showed an uptick in most schools for the semester she reviewed, even as the district monitors students with chronic absences.

The board did not take a formal vote on new policy during this presentation; members asked staff to return to a future policy meeting with clarifications and statutory citations for the anti‑bullying policy and related administrative guidelines.