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Student services director outlines mental health partnerships, staffing and new programs
Summary
The district’s director of student services reviewed the five‑year mental health plan, staffing counts, partnerships with North Carolina Center for Resiliency and NCPALS (Duke team), Olweus bullying prevention rollout and a new therapist placement at Brevard High.
Director of Student Services (identified in the transcript as Speaker 7) presented a required five‑year school mental health plan snapshot and described new and expanding services for the 2025–26 school year.
Staffing figures presented: 11 school counselors, four school social workers, one district‑employed school‑based therapist, four Blue Ridge Health therapists assigned to schools, one SRO at every school, three school nurses and one dropout prevention coordinator. The director said suicide assessments and related data points are being tracked; several categories trend down, though suicide attempts showed an increase that the director attributed to greater student willingness to disclose and parental reporting dynamics.
New partnerships and programs highlighted include a collaboration with the North Carolina Center for Resiliency (led by Carrie Norris) and a staffing/consultation arrangement with NCPALS (a Duke-based team of a psychologist, nurse and social worker) to help staff difficult cases and provide strategies without sharing confidential student identifying information. The district received a Center for Safe Schools grant to roll out the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program beginning in November; one to two staff from each school will be trained initially with a phased multi-year rollout. The district also used external funds to place a therapist at Brevard High School to work with at-risk students (with parent permission) and is piloting a freshman mentoring program at Brevard High to support transition to high school.
The director said enhanced data collection requirements will require an annual deep dive to better show needs such as anxiety, depression, and student basic-needs requests (clothing, food), and that this will help spot strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for targeted supports. Staff scheduled professional development days focused on mental-health strategies and support for student‑serving staff on Oct. 3.
Board members asked clarifying questions about program locations, rollout priorities and definitions (for example, how the district differentiates mean behavior from bullying). The director referenced district policy definitions and reiterated the district’s approach to habitual, targeted conduct as bullying.
