District leaders provided the board with a status update on the district’s climate, culture and wellness initiatives and how they tie into the MTSS framework and staff supports.

Nikki Nichols, lead coordinator of MTSS and SEL, described three priorities: fostering community and belonging through communities of practice, shifting behavior supports to tiered MTSS strategies and expanding staff supports and professional development. Nichols said starter kits for staff calming spaces are in 19 schools and described a tier-1 behavior framework that schools are implementing to reduce exclusionary discipline and increase supportive responses.

Dwayne Clinton and other members of the climate-and-culture team said the district is training staff in restorative practices and trauma-informed approaches and expanding targeted professional development for classified and certified staff. The team reported a small research partnership on cognitive learning profiles that yielded a positive academic signal at a treatment school and described an advanced five-day emotional-wellness staff series that had 12 participants and reported favorable professional impacts.

Presenters also described a new, multiyear grant from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) to place social workers on campuses and support relationship-centered group work for students in alternative programs; during the meeting staff described the award as spanning multiple years with a district figure of about $3,500,000 referenced in the discussion as the five-year amount for the grant-funded work.

Board members asked about implementation and asked staff to bring teacher perspectives to future updates; trustees thanked the team for the work and requested follow-up evidence of impact on students and staff before recommending broader scaling.

The update was informational; no formal board action was taken.