California Safe and Supportive Schools

What’s New? California Healthy Kids Survey Update

Partnering Agencies

What’s New? California Healthy Kids Survey Update

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Join us to learn about changes in the California Healthy Kids Survey designed to be used to support student mental health and wellness. This webinar provides an overview of features of the redesigned survey students and staff will see in 2022–23. We will describe the mental health questions added to the Core module, the new student Behavioral Health and Trauma supplementary modules, and the new staff Trauma-Informed Practice module.

Presenters: 

Tom Hanson (he/him) serves as a Senior Advisor for the California Center for School Climate. Tom is a Senior Managing Director at WestEd. He has extensive experience in developing and validating survey instruments designed to measure school climate and other outcomes. He is the Director of the California School Climate, Health, & Learning Survey (CalSCHLS), a comprehensive youth risk-behavior and resilience data-collection service available to all California local education agencies. He has served as a principal investigator of multiple large-scale randomized controlled trials and has been lead methodologist for several studies examining the impacts of education interventions.

WestEd Research Associate Leslie Poynor is the State Coordinator for the California School Climate, Health, and Learning Survey System, the largest statewide survey of resiliency, protective factors, and risk behaviors in the nation. She provides technical assistance to all levels of education personnel in conducting and using the data from all CalSCHLS surveys in data-driven decision-making, including the California Healthy Kids Survey. She also develops and facilitates professional development and data workshops on creating safe and supportive school climates as well as on the education of the whole child.

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Peer Learning Exchange- Seeking to Understand the Root Causes of Student Absences: The Power of Empathy Interviews

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School climate has a large influence on student well-being and attendance, which in turn affects student outcomes. While chronic absenteeism has been a nationwide issue for as long as it has been measured, this longstanding concern was further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The negative effects of both the pandemic and chronic absenteeism have been especially severe in historically and currently underserved communities and  with students who struggle socially or academically. Examining local attendance data to identify groups of students who are chronically absent is a necessary step in determining who may need support. Whether at a community, school wide, or individual level, we must then do more to understand the many reasons why students may not be attending school regularly. 

 

Marnie Lynch, Senior Director of District and School Support for Solano County Office of Education, will share how her team worked with one school district to conduct empathy interviews with students and school staff to understand root causes of chronic absence within the community. What they learned will help inform the prioritization of tiered supports and improvements in the broader school climate.

Partner: Marnie Lynch, Senior Director of District and School Support, Solano County Office of Education

Highlighted resources:

Peer Learning Exchange- Back to School- Building Positive School Climate From the Start

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Join the CCSC as we partner with Davis Joint Unified School District, who will share highlights and tools from their district’s school climate improvement efforts. They will focus on how they support their schools’ site-based School Climate Committees, prioritizing data-informed decision-making, student voice, and equitable practices. Participants will have the opportunity to share successes and challenges in small and large groups with peers from across the state and to gain practical strategies for supporting a positive school climate at the start of the year. Resources and a framework will be shared that can be used to support your own school climate improvement efforts.

Partnering with Davis Joint Unified School District, featuring Kate Snow, District School Climate Coordinator.

Kate is the Coordinator of School Climate for Davis Joint Unified School District, supporting the district as it endeavors to create environments conducive to learning and working for all. She brings to this work a background in teaching, out of school learning, technology, arts, nonprofit management and consulting, and anti-oppression work, both urban and rural, on both the East and West coasts. She sees school climate work as the interlocking of the personal and the institutional, with opportunities for the liberation of education for both adults and young people through strengthening perception, understanding, and analysis coupled with ideation, action and community.

 

Highlighted resource:

California Center for School Climate: Building Safe, Supportive, and Inclusive School Climates in 2022-23 Webinar

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The California Center for School Climate (CCSC), a project of the CDE operated by WestEd, provides school climate and data use coaching and supports at no cost to LEAs in California. Come hear about all the exciting upcoming professional learning and technical assistance opportunities including school climate collaboratives, data use coaching, peer learning exchanges, and a wide variety of resources available to LEAs. You will also hear from Youth Advisory Team members and a local principal on their experience with CCSC. 

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School Mental Health Matters: Strengthening Local School Mental Health Systems 

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Now more than ever, mental health is a priority for California schools. Learn how the School Health Assessment and Performance Evaluation (SHAPE) System can help schools and districts build capacity for a more comprehensive school mental health system. SHAPE is a free, web-based platform available to schools, districts, and states looking for a suite of resources and tools to facilitate continuous quality improvement. The University of Maryland National Center for School Mental Health presenter will provide an overview of SHAPE, including its assessment tools and resources to support implementation and ongoing monitoring of a comprehensive school mental health system. Del Norte Unified School District will share their experience adopting SHAPE to build districtwide school mental health capacity. 

Featuring Dr. Elizabeth Connors:
Dr. Elizabeth Connors is an assistant professor at Yale University in the Division of Prevention and Community Research and at the Child Study Center. She also collaborates with the University of Maryland National Center for School Mental Health, where she is the Director of Quality Improvement and a developer of The SHAPE System. Dr. Connors received her Ph.D. in clinical child and community psychology, and her work focuses on improving access to high-quality mental health promotion and prevention and intervention services and supports for underserved children, adolescents, young adults, and their families in critical access points such as schools.

Hosted by the CA Center for School Climate and Project Cal-Well.

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Highlighted Resources 

Addressing Mental Health: The Role of Mental Health and Wellness Data in Shaping Student Supports 

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Stress, anxiety, and chronic sadness increased for students in California during the COVID-19 pandemic. Given this, how can schools use available mental health data to better support students? This session will address this question by discussing the newly released California Department of Education Health Indicator Report, which is available for all districts that administer the California Healthy Kids Survey. Presenters will describe several of the mental health and wellness indicators that districts can use to strengthen their support services. To highlight what this looks like in practice, staff from Paradise Unified School District will share their experiences using data to educate and support the mental health and well-being of students through the personal and collective trauma associated with the Camp Fire, which destroyed four schools and damaged several others, impacting the entire community.

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Presenters

Michael Furlong, PhD is a research professor and a distinguished professor emeritus of school psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He coedited the Handbook of Positive Psychology in Schools: Supporting Process and Practice (2009, 2014, 2022) and collaborates with colleagues on Project Covitality www.covitalityucsb.info, supporting schools’ efforts to foster all students’ social-emotional development.

Tom Hanson, PhD (he/him) serves as a Senior Advisor for the California Center for School Climate. Tom is a Senior Managing Director at WestEd. He has extensive experience in developing and validating survey instruments designed to measure school climate and other outcomes. He is the Director of the California School Climate, Health, & Learning Survey (CalSCHLS), a comprehensive youth risk-behavior and resilience data-collection service available to all California local education agencies. He has served as a principal investigator of multiple large-scale randomized controlled trials and has been lead methodologist for several studies examining the impacts of education interventions.

Scott Lindstrom is co-coordinator of trauma response and recovery for Butte County Office of Education (BCOE) and an advanced trainer of the Nurtured Heart Approach (NHA). He currently coordinates the school-based mental health response to the Camp Fire disaster. Prior to his work with BCOE, he served 30-plus years as a school psychologist and coordinator of student support programs for the Chico Unified School District. In this role, he led the development of a sustained, multitiered support system that served students with school climate; social-emotional learning; restorative practices; positive behavioral interventions and supports; student interventions; and parent supports. For 20 years, Scott served as a trainer and consultant to the California Department of Mental Health for the Early Mental Health Initiative. In addition to his work at BCOE, he offers training and coaching for educators, parents, and mental health professionals in NHA, program development, and trauma-responsive supports.

Carrie Dawes is a 17-year Paradise Unified School District employee in Northern California. The majority of her time has been spent in administration, including as a school principal at the elementary, middle, and high school levels (both comprehensive and continuation). She was the administrator for student services the morning of November 8, 2018, when the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California’s history swept through the town of Paradise and surrounding areas. With her efforts, along with all of the PUSD teachers and staff, 3,401 students were successfully evacuated off the Ridge that morning. The trauma of that day has manifested itself in so many ways for staff, students, and families in the area. After the fire, Carrie became an administrator on special assignment to collaborate with county mental health agencies and to write grants to provide necessary services for the school community. She is honored to be a part of Paradise Unified School District’s commitment to staff and student mental wellness in the aftermath of this disaster.