Center Grove Community School Corporation counselor Karen Gutsch works with students at Walnut Grove Elementary School Thursday. Grant funding will help Center Grove officials pay counseling interns.
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Center Grove and Franklin schools each received thousands of dollars in state money to help bolster mental health and behavioral help in the coming school year.
Center Grove Community School Corporation received $87,000 from the Indiana Department of Education’s Comprehensive School Counseling Grant, while Franklin Community School Corporation received $5,162, according to an IDOE news release.
Both school districts received the total amount they applied for, school officials said.
Center Grove school leaders will use the money to fund an internship program for school counselors and social workers, said Christy Berger, Director of School Counseling and Mental Health.
The school district has an internship program for graduate-level students, but those positions are unpaid. By including a stipend of $5,000 a year for the four students, Berger said she hopes it will help recruit and retain more people who may want to work for Center Grove schools in the future. That will in turn help students succeed, as they’ll have assistance in addressing their mental health needs, she said.
“We really wanted to focus on recruiting school counselors and social work interns to build our pipeline for employees, so we will pay those interns stipends to work with us for the next two school years,” Berger said.
School officials intend to hire four students for the internships, including three counselors and one district-wide school social worker. One counselor will be assigned to the elementary school level, one to middle school students and one to Center Grove High School. This is subject to change, as if there is an uneven level of interest among applicants, counselors might be distributed differently, she said.
The money will cover the internship program for the entirety of the 2023-24 school year and for the fall 2024 semester, with each intern serving two semesters. The second school year’s interns will be paid for their work during the spring 2024 semester from other grant funding, such as Title IV federal funding, Berger said.
The counseling grant will also help pay for educator well-being. Each of the school district’s 10 buildings will receive about $1,000, which can vary based on how much building administrators request, she said.
“We want to provide ongoing self-care activities throughout the school year to support teacher and staff well-being,” Berger said. “It might be lighting or a couch with space for them to sit and relax. It could be having water stations with water bottles all around so they’re hydrated or healthy snacks for them.”
Other funding will go toward supplies for literacy and study skills interventions, career fair supplies and small group curriculum items for students’ social, emotional and behavioral well-being, according to a budget outline from Center Grove schools.
Franklin Schools’ allocation will be entirely used at Northwood Elementary School. There, school counselor Hannah Richardson applied for a grant to create a calm-down space in every classroom, said Andrea Korreck, the school’s principal.
“It will have a beanbag-type chair, a canopy and a cart that has different sensory items like fidgets, things students can hold that help them reset,” she said.
Instead of teachers telling students to leave the classroom when they need to regulate their emotions, students will be able to calm down without avoiding missing valuable instruction time, Korreck said.
“Even if you’re away from your desk, you’re still engaged in listening and potentially being involved in the learning that’s going on,” she said.
While some teachers may have had these spaces in their classrooms before the grant award, the money makes it so teachers don’t have to pay for these materials themselves. It also means all Northwood students will have access to the same resources, Korreck said.
Multiple students can use the calming space at the same time, she said.
“When somebody around you needs to calm down and needs to regulate their strong emotions, somebody else can join them, which is called co-regulation,” Korreck said. “Even as adults, there are times we’re involved in something where we need to walk a few steps or go to another room for a minute before we resume our work. This will help make sure kids know it’s OK.”
