Franklin schools want to add a mental health coordinator for the district and a school-based mental health therapist at every building, using money from a tax increase the voters approved earlier this month.
The coordinator will oversee mental health staff, including a school-based therapist at every building, and develop and implement mental health screening protocols for students, Superintendent David Clendening said.
Franklin schools will also use referendum dollars to raise teacher and support staff salaries, but the most planning will occur in how to spend the money to improve student safety, which will focus largely on mental health. The schools plan to add a fourth school resource officer, a mental health coordinator and mental health therapists, Operations Director Jeff Sewell said.
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The referendum, which raises property tax dollars by 23 cents per $100 of assessed value, will raise $3.5 million for Franklin schools every year over an eight-year period, with revenue hitting the district starting in June of 2020.
Of that money, each year:
$1,068,000 would be spent on salary increases for teachers,
$610,000 would go towards salary increases for support staff
$705,000 for mental health services
About $1.1 million towards academics and education-related programs, along with reserve funding.
Although Franklin schools would prefer to hire the mental health coordinator before the 2020-2021 school year, there are no finalized plans. The district would have to look for money in its budget for any hires they want to make before referendum money comes in, Sewell said.
The eight mental health therapists won’t start until tax dollars from the referendum arrive, he said.
Sewell is on a mental health committee, along with Deb Brown-Nally, director of curriculum, instruction and assessment, five counselors, Northwood Elementary School Principal Nicci Sargent and Nicole Holland from Adult and Child, a non-profit organization that provides mental health services for children and their families, including at Franklin schools.
The committee is looking at the best way to give students services. To do so, committee members have visited Hamilton Southeastern schools to discuss mental health services and also plan on visiting schools in Marion County, but how schools deliver mental health services to students comes secondary to making sure whoever they hire builds relationships with students.
“I think there’s a lot of effective ways to do it,” Sewell said. “It’s a matter of what works best for the corporation. I think the delivery model is not as important as if you have a good support network for kids, developing relationships and having opportunities for kids to receive help if they need it.”
Late last year, the committee created a mental health survey for students, asking students what issues they and their peers were affected by. The survey of about 900 students in 7{sup}th{/sup} through 12{sup}th{/sup} grade revealed more than 80 percent of students saw stress and/or anxiety in themselves or their peers, with 73.6 percent of respondents seeing depression as an issue with themselves or others.
About 42 percent of students said either they or someone they know has struggled with thoughts of suicide.
Franklin schools have therapists from Adult and Child in its buildings. With referendum money, the district plans to bridge a gap in mental health services for about 300 students who likely need services but who would otherwise not be fully covered by Adult and Child’s sliding income scale, which only covers 100 percent of the costs of services for students whose families are at or below the federal poverty line. For students who aren’t below the poverty line, the organization charges the parents’ insurance company.
For children who don’t aren’t served by Adult and Child, Franklin schools aren’t necessarily looking to add free services, but instead increase options and make sure everyone is served, Sewell said.
“We’re trying to remove barriers for therapy, trying to find a good balance of options and increase the options for students who might not fall under Adult and Child,” Sewell said.
Along with adding therapists and a mental health coordinator, Franklin schools also want to add a fourth school resource officer by the fall, he said.
With a fourth school resource officer, the middle and high school buildings would each have their own officer, along with Custer Baker Intermediate School. The five elementary schools would share the other, Clendening said.
Aside from assisting with school safety, the district hopes the school resource officers, commonly known as SROs, can continue to build relationships with students, Sewell said.
Franklin schools will have to find money in the budget for the officer, which could come from grant funding, but that hasn’t been finalized. Once grant funding comes in, the officer’s salary will be funded mostly, if not entirely by referendum dollars. The district pays Officer Doug Cox’s salary, while the city of Franklin funds the other two positions, he said.
“I think the referendum has grouped a few things: mental health and school safety,” Sewell said. “The school resource officers and those things at times can be related. The SRO is more on the school safety side. We hope they’re relational with students and hope they provide a good role model and a friend to the students.”
Sewell said the resource officers are not tasked with counseling, but that the realm of mental health includes ensuring the safety of students, who have the potential to hurt themselves or others in extreme cases.
Franklin schools are also looking to convert a part-time dean of students at Custer Baker into a full-time job this fall.
“The dean of students would help with an immediate response to kids not doing what we want them to in school, and would work with teachers, students and parents in re-engaging kids to a safe learning environment,” Clendening said.
Pay to be negotiated
In September, teachers and administration will negotiate contracts, with Franklin’s goal of boosting starting teacher salaries from $37,500 to $40,000 using referendum dollars in mind. That money won’t hit the district until June of 2020, so the district likely won’t be able to bridge that gap completely until the 2020-21 school year, Executive Director of Finance Jeff Mercer said.
Franklin schools also plan to raise support staff salaries by 10 to 12 percent, but those raises won’t have to be negotiated. The district will have a timeline for those raises in the near future, Superintendent David Clendening said.
Without the referendum, Franklin schools would still be looking at temporary solutions to permanent problems, Brown-Nally said.
“We did not have a plan B,” Brown-Nally said. “We have to have additional resources to provide the services our students deserve. Had it not passed we would continue to Band-Aid as best we could but we could never truly address the true issue our kids face every day. I’m so proud of our community to see the need for this and say ‘yes.’”
