Clark-Pleasant School Board members listen to a presentation on Panorama social emotional learning surveys and the school’s Project AWARE grant on Tuesday evening.
Clark-Pleasant school board members received more information about district-wide social emotional learning, or SEL, surveys ahead of their next meeting to reconsider the survey contract.
The school board held a public work session Tuesday night, where they, along with members of the public who attended, were presented more information about the school’s Project AWARE grant and plans for an SEL survey with Panorama Education.
Project AWARE is a program implemented by the Indiana Department of Education and the state’s FSSA Division of Mental Health and Addiction. Clark-Pleasant joined a cohort along with three other schools in the state to work on creating “sustainable school-based mental health systems and supports for future statewide implementation.”
With the funding from Project AWARE, Clark-Pleasant is receiving $38.39 per student, and a salary for a district-wide wellness coordinator annually until December 2026.
The school established four goals for using the grant, and one of those includes “being proactive to identify students who might need additional support.” That is where a universal screener, or survey, comes in. The survey is also a requirement for the grant program.
All five members of the Clark-Pleasant School Board last month denied approval of a contract with Panorama Education to distribute the SEL survey to all K-12 students in the district. They asked school officials to return with more information on the surveys, and what they could look like.
The survey distributor, Panorama Education, is a third-party educational materials distributor and data collector used by schools around the country. Based in Boston, the company largely specializes in social emotional learning data studies in schools, according to its website.
Connie Poston, Clark Pleasant’s director of behavior health, presented information to the board about Project AWARE and the Panorama surveys. She said universal screeners are designed to capture student voices, and learn where school officials and teachers can make changes to better help students.
“It allows students to express their perspectives about teaching and learning, culture and climate and their classroom experiences,” Poston said.
Other nearby schools either currently use or have used Panorama for school-wide surveys, including Center Grove and Greenwood schools, along with Hamilton Southeastern and Perry Township schools. The Hamilton Southeastern School Board this month voted to terminate its contract with Panorama over concerns about storing the students’ data.
To address some concerns from Clark-Pleasant parents and some board members about the contents of the questions, Poston identified the five topics the district plans to center its questions through Panorama. Those topics are: school safety, student well-being, supportive relationships, emotion regulation and social awareness.
These topics were narrowed down with the help of school administrators and parent representatives from each grade level — elementary, middle school and high school.
School board members and those in attendance at the meeting were also provided with lists of questions that fall under those topics for grades 6-12 and 3-5. Some of the questions in the school safety category for all grade levels include: How often are you disrespectful to others at your school? How likely is it that someone from your school will bully you online? How often do students get into physical fights at your school?
Other survey questions around student well-being ask about how often students feel negative or positive emotions, such as how often they feel angry, sad or lonely or how often they feel excited, happy or loved. Some of the social awareness questions for 6-12 include: How carefully do you listen to other people’s points of view? How well do you get along with students who are different from you? To what extent were you able to stand up for yourself without putting others down?
Each question can also be modified however school officials want. So if they do not like the wording of one question, they can change it, Poston said.
Surveys will not be given directly to kindergarten through second grade students because they generally may not know how to answer questions about their mental health yet, Poston said. Instead, teachers will fill out surveys about their observations of student behaviors.
“We do want to gauge how they’re doing, and do we need to intervene?” Poston said. “Especially with our kindergartners … these guys were born during the pandemic or they were at home as they were little, so we need to make sure that they are getting those behavior skills as well.”
The plan is for the school to distribute these surveys over a two-week period between May 11 and May 20 this year, Poston said. The surveys are expected to take between 15 and 20 minutes.
Prior to the survey distributions, parents will be sent a letter via several mediums online, including ParentSquare, and they can also receive physical copies. This letter will explain the surveys, and link to the questions that will be asked.
Parents can also opt their children out of the surveys, and opt-out instructions are explained in the letter, Poston said.
Erica Garrity, the school district’s wellness coordinator, answered the question, “why do we need to ask questions?” Safety is the first and foremost reason, she said.
Garrity provided data that showed 90-100% of individuals who commit K-12 mass shootings struggle with various aspects of mental well-being. 20% experienced trauma during childhood, and 83% of the motivations of these individuals were from a grievance with peers, staff or romantic partners.
Clark-Pleasant since January 2020 has had 479 suicide assessments, with 112 so far for the 2022-2023 school year, Garrity said. The district has also made 186 suspected abuse and neglect reports to the Department of Child Services.
The data collected will generally be used to identify areas where the school can help students. It will also identify students who may need more mental health help or those who are in a crisis.
Poston said an example of using the data would be if, for example, a vast majority of students at the middle school say they feel they are likely to be bullied online, Poston and school officials can arrange lessons or forums to help combat online bullying. That could be through professional development with administration and teachers to help prevent bullying, or a family forum to talk about bullying.
Some concerns from the last school board meeting also had to do with how Panorama handles storing student data. In response to those concerns, Poston said all student data is encrypted, so it cannot be easily accessed or hacked. Panorama also follows all privacy laws including the Federal Education Rights and Privacy Act and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. Panorama also cannot sell or share its student data with any third party company, unless authorized by the school, which Poston said they will not authorize.
Two school board members, Dave Thompson and Butch Zike questioned again if Clark-Pleasant could just do its own survey, instead of using a third party like Panorama.
Per the rules of the Project AWARE grant, the school must use an IDOE-approved universal screener, Poston said. The school could get its own survey approved, but she was not sure of the likelihood of that happening.
Also, Clark-Pleasant doing its own survey would not come with the data analysis and follow-up tools that Panorama provides, Poston said.
“When you’re creating a survey, there are certain kinds of requirements that have to be put in place to prove that it’s an evidence-based survey — that it’s getting the information you want,” Poston said. “I’m not a professional in survey creation, so I couldn’t guarantee the questions we would ask are going to get us the data that we want in a way that’s applicable to good research.”
The board did not take any action on Tuesday, and will take up the Panorama contract again at their regular meeting next week. The board needs to approve the contract with Panorama before school officials can start building the surveys. If they want more policy involvement with the surveys later on, after approving the contract, they can, Superintendent Patrick Spray said.
Board member Kent Beeson said he was happier with the additional information presented to him and the board about the surveys and what will be asked of the students.
“I’m much more comfortable with these categories, with the ability to have different levels of review before we decide, ‘Hey kids, take this,’” Beeson said.
In the public comment section, a parent shared her story about being a victim of domestic violence. She and said she “was fooling herself” trying to not believe the traumatic effect it had on her children.
Her children were placed in school-based therapy, after she talked to the school about their situation. Her children, at the time, didn’t receive much support because of what she saw as a lack of training and knowledge to help students with trauma. She hopes for that to continue changing.
The parent said she supported efforts to expand mental health services for students in Clark-Pleasant. Sometimes children need access to help outside of their parents, she said.
“My children had been suffering in silence,” she said. “I wished that I could have helped sooner. I wish that there could have been something in place that my children could have accessed separately from me as a parent.”
Others at the meeting were less supportive of the Panorama contract and surveys. Parent Heather McMurray said she did not think any of her questions were answered about keeping student data, and how long it would be attached to them. She said she thought the presentation “regurgitated Panorama’s website,” instead of looking at the contract.
McMurray asked why Clark-Pleasant needed to use Panorama when it has not been doing a good job at helping and supporting parents and students anyway, in her opinion.
“Panorama doesn’t just do surveys. It wants the whole child,” McMurray said. “When I talk about educating my whole child, I’m talking body, mind, soul. Soul, my job, education, yours. Minds shouldn’t be messed with or tweaked … but I won’t go on a tangent.”
School board member Kimberly Crawford asked McMurray if she planned on opting out anyway. To which McMurray said yes, but her child has always been given the surveys anyway in the past.
The school board’s next regular meeting is March 14.
