The Durant School District has received a grant to strengthen the mental health of students.
Delinda Knox, safe schools director/ public information officer, spoke about the grant during a meeting last month of the Durant Board of Education.
She said that two years ago, Texoma Community Foundation started feasibility studies in Bryan, Marshall, Grayson and Fannin counties and they identified those four counties as their service areas and the counties were awarded a $4 million grant.
“They wanted to put that back into the community and they have chosen those four counties to put a million dollars back into,” Knox said. “They’re giving $1 million to each one of those four counties.
“They started approaching leadership here in Bryan County and we had a task force forum and then we had multiple meetings with mental health providers, with Choctaw Nation, the schools. They wanted us to put together a plan for Bryan County and they had outlined very specific strategies that we had to work on. This is what their $1 million was going to focus on ... with focus on mental wellness, expand mental wellness services in the schools and support youth and family and increase opportunities to strengthen social connections across Bryan County.” According to Knox, the school task force developed a plan and presented it to the TCF board.
The school district was then notified it would be receiving the grant.
“Durant Public Schools is going to serve as the receptive school agent for the grant and with the strategies, we’re supporting a Bryan County collaborative where we’re going to be forming a mental health task force,” Knox said, adding that the program is throughout Bryan County.
The school district’s safe schools team along with a partnership with Lighthouse Behavioral Health will be handling the program.
Licensed Professional Counselor Debbie Crites was hired back by the school district.
“Debbie has experience in schools,” Knox said. “She was a high school teacher, then school counselor and turned LPC. We’re super excited to bring her back on. We brought her back on for this grant specifically, so she’s going to be serving as our liaison with the schools.
“We’re going to be taking the mental health protocol that we have here in Durant out to our county schools is our goal and offering some county services. We’re not going to be doing long-term therapy in those schools, but we’re going to be working with those schools, counselors, to help them make those connections. There’s a referral process. If you have a student who’s in a mental health crisis now, and we have to send them to the emergency room to be evaluated, that’s very scary to have to go sit in the emergency room. Then, we end up bringing an iPad in and they do the evaluation on an iPad with a therapist that’s sitting elsewhere.”
Knox said the process can now be completed with an iPad at the school with Lighthouse, the mental health provider that is contracted with the state to do those evaluations.
Knox said the program is available for every school across the county.
“We pulled the numbers from Lighthouse to see how many schools have utilized that,” Knox said. “Over the last few years, Durant uses it unfortunately quite often. The county schools, one school had used it twice in that past two years.
“We know there’s students out there that need those services and need those things. We’re just not sure if the schools know how to access them or feel comfortable accessing them. So, we’re going to work with them to basically build that relationship with them between Durant and the county schools on this project to be able to provide mental health services out to these students.”
Knox said that schools in the county share students with many of them going back and forth from Calera to Durant and Rock Creek and Silo.
“We want them to all be on the same page in regards to their mental health and if we an save one student’s life, we’ve succeeded,” Knox said. “So, basically, we’re going to be working with the schools. So, if you start hearing that we have Durant School employees out working in Rock Creek … it could be Debbie and then we’re going to be hiring one additional person. We’re going to be able to offer through the grant a social emotional learning platform that we used here in Durant. Everything we’ve done here in Durant has been funded on another federal grant.”
According to Knox, superintendents at county schools have said they will accept whatever help can be provided.
“We’re very excited,” Knox said. “It’s kind of been a dream of ours to be able to do for a long time and be able to expand our services.”