McKeesport Area School District forms YESS team through Project SEEKS SES grant

By Jeremy Tepper, ALLEGHENY INTERMEDIATE UNIT

 

About a year ago, McKeesport Area’s administration had heard about Pressley Ridge’s YESS (Youth Engagement Support Services) team model.

The YESS team — which was piloted at the Penn Hills School District — focuses on helping address issues like truancy, while also assisting in de-escalation, interventions and generally trying to create a more positive environment in schools.

While McKeesport was intrigued by the idea of contracting their own YESS team, budget concerns left them putting the idea on the backburner. Fast forward, and McKeesport now finds itself developing its own YESS team, thanks to funding from Project SEEKS SES, a partnership between the Allegheny Intermediate Unit (AIU) and the Allegheny County Health Department (ACHD) that addresses trauma, behavior and mental health issues in ten school districts.

“SEEKS has been wonderful in providing these opportunities, because without it our school district would probably not have been able to implement it this year,” said Angela Cale, McKeesport Area’s Coordinator of Special Education and Alternative Services.

McKeesport’s YESS team will be comprised of seven members — six youth engagement specialists and one lead youth engagement specialist. The team will focus on grades 6-12, with three of the members spending their time at Founder’s Hall Middle School and three at the McKeesport Area Senior High School. While accessing strengths and weaknesses after the COVID-19 pandemic during asset mapping for the grant, McKeesport found that they had an acute need for further support in their targeted grades.

“As we did our asset mapping, we saw that we had a lot of supports in our elementary school and those supports kind of fall off once you hit 6th grade,” Cale said. “We saw that when we compared suspension data, expulsion data and overall discipline data, that where those supports dropped off was where our greatest need was at.”

Cale said decreasing out of class time will be a primary aim of the YESS team, helping address truancy and issues in a classroom that might ordinarily result in an office referral. Cale anticipates the team will assist with student entry in the morning and dismissal at the end of the day, while also hanging around in high traffic areas that might not usually have too many adults present. During classes, they will walk through the halls and keep their eyes and ears alert for issues inside or outside the classroom.

The YESS team, Cale believes, will be tremendously helpful in not only helping support students, but taking some burden off of teachers.

“We hope that they impact our students in school to have an increase in better grades, a decrease in behavior issues brought into the school, but also to provide support to the students about things that are available and constructive in our community, so that we eventually decrease some of the behavioral incidents that occur in the community,” Cale said.

“They could take things that are happening in the community and meet with small groups in the school to try to quell some of those situations. They will also look at some of the students that have a higher incidence of behavior issues and work with reaching out to families and making sure that they’re checking in with those students to provide daily support.”

Regardless of the student, providing regular check-ins and being a consistent presence is key to the YESS team’s success, said Michele Woodward, the satellite program director at Pressley Ridge. All Pressley Ridge staff is trained in de-escalation skills, restorative practices and trauma-informed care, which makes them particularly effective in being able to earn trust.

“We take on the approach of meeting the students where they are and working from there. We don’t push them before they’re ready but we are a constant presence for them,” said Woodward.

“We give them an opportunity to seek us out when they need to. We do daily check-ins. It could be a simple just saying hello, but if you do that consistently, then over time that trust gets built and they start seeking you out.”

Jesse McLean, Pressley Ridge’s Executive Director of Pennsylvania, added similar thoughts, noting that Pressley Ridge data indicates that a child is much more likely to be successful if they have trust in an adult in their life.

“We do this by trying to be very proactive in engaging with the students, and building that relationship and rapport so that they feel comfortable talking to us about things before they occur,” McLean said.

“As the saying goes, it takes a village in order to create an impact. We’re just trying to be that one layer, so they know when they come to school, they have an adult that they can trust.”

Duquesne to expand Pressley Ridge services through Project SEEKS SES

By Jeremy Tepper, ALLEGHENY INTERMEDIATE UNIT 

The Duquesne City School District makes equity a priority. On a day-to-day basis, the district is constantly looking for new ways to properly access and educate each and every student equally.

Lucy McDonough, the district’s special education consultant, has furthered those efforts since joining the district this school year.

“That’s been a goal of mine, to build the resources and the capacity within Duquesne to be able to educate all of their students in the district,” McDonough said. “That’s what we’re working toward and we’re going to keep building on that.”

McDonough has helped connect the district with Pressley Ridge, who provides districts with specialized education services, among other things. This school year, Duquesne City and Pressley Ridge have partnered to have two behavioral support staff. The support staff has been so successful that Duquesne City has planned an expansion.

Currently, the district has Pressley Ridge behavioral support staff in one classroom. The plan is to expand that support staff to three classrooms.

“Pressley Ridge has been instrumental in supporting our teacher and the K-2 students as they display mental and behavioral issues. They have helped the students be able to self-advocate, as well as create a schedule that helps the students gain an understanding of their day and what the expectations are,” said Duquesne City superintendent Dr. Sue Mariani.

“The students and the teacher have been able to establish a structure within the classroom where the students are starting to feel successful inside the classroom. We are thrilled with our partnership and look forward to expanding in the future.”

Such an expansion is possible through Project SEEKS SES, an AIU and ACHD grant-funded collaboration to address social and emotional health issues exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Duquesne City was picked by the ACHD as one of ten districts to receive funding from the grant.

“We partnered with Pressley Ridge to provide a higher level of service within our emotional support classrooms, so that we could keep kids in the district, and hopefully make it a quicker return to their regular education classrooms,” McDonough said.

“They have a model they use with two behavioral support staff in one classroom that work alongside the teacher to address the social skills and the emotional needs of the kids, behavioral interventions, and provide a level of support that we don’t typically have here.”

Currently, the support staff is just in a K-2 classroom, which generally affects 8-12 students. With next school year’s expansion, the district will be able to impact roughly 24 or 25 students. Michele Woodward oversees all of Pressley Ridge’s satellite programs. She said her staff’s training makes them particularly qualified to handle the support that Duquesne City needs.

“All of our staff in satellite programs are trained in CPI (Crisis Prevention Intervention). They get training on trauma-informed practices and we also train them on restorative practices,” Woodward said. “We try to take on a more restorative approach with all of the students.”

Woodward said there has been a greater need for emotional and behavioral support staff in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I think it has come to the forefront since COVID. The students spent their time learning and socializing through electronic devices,” Woodward said.

“Now that they’re back in the classroom for in person learning, it has been a challenge. We’re really seeing it with some of the younger students who started school during the pandemic. They’re adjusting to what it is like to be in school. For some of the older students, I just think it’s something they have got used to. It’s taking some time to transition back.”

Pressley Ridge’s staff and Duquesne City’s staff collaborate as a team by identifying the needs of each student in the targeted classroom and making a plan for them. Pressley Ridge then keeps track of behavioral data and meets as a team with Duquesne on a weekly basis.

Beyond providing staff, Pressley Ridge has also provided some of Duquesne City’s staff with some of the same trauma-informed training that they have, and Woodward said they were very receptive to it. McDonough is hopeful that this collaborative spirit will help raise the skill level of the district’s staff.

“The goal is that we get immersed in hands-on behavioral interventions and we see it in action,” McDonough said.

“Always the goal of doing anything like this is that we’re able to sustain this and build the capacity in the district to do this.”