BehavioralHealth ServicesforOPSstudents

OPS Adds Behavioral Health Services Team to Current MultiTiered Systems of Support (MTSS)

“To be able to add another five staff members to help impact kids in our district with social-emotional and behavioral needs is incredible,” says Superintendent Jeff Haase.

Funding and Impact

These new behavioral health positions are being funded by the State of Michigan through 31aa funding that is specifically for behavioral health services in schools to support and improve the social-emotional health of our students, K-12. It is guaranteed for two years and may continue after that. This removes a huge barrier to serving all students.

“Special Education staff members have always been available to provide Tier 3 (more intense) support, but students needed to qualify with a disability in order to access those intensive services. We now are able to provide Tier 3 support to all students in the district who need them with the addition of this team,” Hoekstra explains. “School districts have never had the amount of funding to be able support such intensive needs, needs that have prohibited some kids from learning for a while now, so it feels amazing that we have now built the system to be able to provide intensive support to students right where they are for most of the day during the school year.”

The scope of this new team will not only impact students, but staff and families, as well. The Behavioral Health Services Coordinator will oversee the systems district-wide, setting up and providing Trauma Informed Practices and Restorative Justice professional development to staff and parents. She will collaborate with each building to create systems around individual students with the goal of improving district-wide systems.

The School-Based Therapists provide Tier 3 support to students whose emotional health prohibits them from participating in the learning environment.

The Behavioral Health Aides provide support to students in the classroom and keep them in the learning environment.

Again, these new roles complement the existing behavioral health staff we already have - and an entirely separate academic support team - and allow us to expand our services. “It has always been my dream to offer the full continuum of social emotional support, now being called Behavioral Health Services, in schools. This will help students get into the right mindset to reach their learning potential and we’re excited to get the year started and begin providing this support to our kids,” Hoekstra adds.