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Huntsville City Schools spotlights mental-health, bullying-prevention and expanded CTE supports at work session
Summary
Student services staff told the school board the district expanded counseling and behavioral training, secured grants (including a $25,000 middle-school programming grant), and aims to strengthen parent-facing registration materials ahead of a Jan. 24 curriculum showcase.
Huntsville City Schools student services leaders presented a string of initiatives at the Jan. 13 work session aimed at reducing chronic absenteeism and bolstering mental-health and bullying-prevention efforts across the district.
Jasmine Green, student welfare coordinator, opened the update by highlighting school-level events and program growth: Excel Prep reported 8 graduates in December 2024 and 22 in 2025, Artemis Virtual Academy secured two competitive grants including a $25,000 middle-school computer-programming grant, and several schools launched extracurricular teams in robotics, esports and cybersecurity. Green said these opportunities support college- and career-readiness and increase student engagement.
Miss Dent, who delivered Behavioral Learning remarks, described a multi-month training rollout for classroom management (COMP) using seven modules and feeder-pattern trainings beginning with Lee High School. "We're continuing with our PBIS initiative," she told the board, noting a January 5 tier-2 PBIS refresher led by Dr. Sarah McDaniel and district efforts on risk-ratio training to identify and reduce disproportionality in discipline data.
Miss Brown, school counseling lead, described tightened bullying response procedures using the FMX reporting platform (reports go to building administrators and the district receives copies), monthly district trend reviews, and ongoing partnerships for prevention programming. She said the district will offer school-wide trainings on weapons, vaping and suicide prevention this semester and is partnering with community organizations including Oakwood University and Pain Unwasted for student- and faculty-facing sessions.
Miss Brown also outlined family outreach: a curriculum showcase is scheduled for Jan. 24 from 9 a.m. to noon at the new Center for Technology, course catalogs will be posted online by the end of the month, and counselors will begin in-class registration outreach on Feb. 9 with primary registration forms due by March 13 (the Friday before spring break). She said the district will tape grade-level informational sessions for parents through ETV to provide a single online resource for course and CTE information.
On health and attendance, student services reported continuing work to remove medical barriers to learning through individualized health plans and campus triage, said the district has certified staff in CPR/AED with Huntsville Hospital, and told the board chronic absenteeism decreased by more than 1,000 students after targeted interventions and weekly monitoring.
The presentation closed with a note that Huntsville City Schools' SPED Pre-K program received a $50,000 state grant to provide trauma-informed training and instructional kits for Pre-K teachers, and that students with extreme behavioral or mental-health needs may be referred to a district multidisciplinary support team for nonpunitive support planning.
Board members asked clarifying questions about the origin of the COMP training, measurement of year-over-year progress, and partnerships; staff cited FMX data, a suicide-intervention log, and principal-level data reviews as the district's means of tracking outcomes. The district did not propose board action on these items at the meeting; the session served as an informational update.
