Educators say APS mental health infusion bringing a wealth of benefits

AURORA | The clear sound of a bell rang through Bobbie Kuminka’s fifth-grade class at Elkhart Elementary School. The twenty-some students sat in silence, heads down on their desks, with eyes closed. The bell’s note hung in the air and slowly slipped away.

“You should just be listening to your own breath,” Kuminka told them.

The peaceful exercise was meant to facilitate “mindfulness” – reflection or contemplation – in the crop of young students.

They were quiet Friday as Kuminka led them through other mindfulness exercises. Once again, they rested their heads on desks and closed their eyes, this time raising their arms in response to basic questions. How were they feeling that day? Were they exhausted, stressed out, focused, anxious?

Mindfulness routines are familiar to many Elkhart students.

Educators in the school, and the Aurora Public Schools district, have turned to the exercises as part of a major investment in student mental health they say has worked wonders on test scores as well as individual students’ wellbeing.

“It is the most dramatic shift I’ve ever seen in a building,” Elkhart Principal Ron Schumacher said of the investment.

In addition to the regular mindfulness exercises, Elkhart recently hired a social worker paid for with an influx of voter-approved tax revenue. In November 2018, APS successfully convinced resident voters that a $35 million mill levy override to benefit student mental health would tangibly improve school climates and results.

During the campaign, teachers told the Sentinel that young students could be so stressed out, or traumatized by neighborhood violence and problems at home, that successfully learning was the last thing on their minds. They said addressing student mental health as a key first step before students – and school test scores – could break through achievement ceilings.

The district has made quick work hiring new mental health staff with the override revenue. About $13 million was slated for a general mental health and security fund.

Since voters approved the mill levy override last year, the district has hired over 100 mental health staff including social workers, counselors and therapists for schools. About 70 of those new staff are funded by the mill levy, according to a district presentation to the school board last month. A state grant has also helped the district staff positions.

The net effect has been a sizable reduction in the ratio of students to mental health staff districtwide. And more mental health staff are on the way.

At Elkhart, the new staffer is social worker Jordan Glaude.

Schumacher said she’s been a bellwether of change at the school. He didn’t beat around the bush when talking about the value of having Glaude at Elkhart, the north Aurora elementary school near the intersection of East 11th Avenue and North Chambers Road.

“The dollar amount is expensive but the benefit is ten times the cost,” Schumacher said. “There’s no other staff member I could have added and gotten the dollar cost benefit of having more mental health in the building.”

School staff told the Sentinel that routine stress is extremely common among students, and all of the some-550 student body can benefit from the simple breathing exercises such as the one in Kuminka’s fifth-grade class or group yoga in a first-grade class.

But Schumacher said, “There’s trauma all through this neighborhood.”

Staff said students’ parents have suffered untimely deaths from violence, lost their homes, gone hungry and been deported. There’s also a sizable refugee population that may have brought harsh memories from previous lives overseas.

The net impact of one student who is lashing out, catatonic, or otherwise unable to sit and learn properly in a school can be a “domino effect,” Schumacher said. Classrooms can become out of control.

Previously, the school only had one psychologist to work with struggling students.

But the school district is legally required to provide a pre-determined regimen of support for students with special needs. That left little time, attention and resources to work with all of the students that weren’t among the most struggling, but still desperately needed special support to develop critical social and emotional learning skills, staff said.

With Glaude on staff, Schumacher said the school psychologist, Ariel Bowlby, is now able to focus specifically on kids with legally-defined special needs. She helps students with speech-language or other ability deficiencies, and works with bottled-up students to help them talk through their feelings. She’ll even teach them the words for emotions.

Those skills can save students from spiraling downward, she said, negatively impacting students around them while they do.

Glaude, the social worker, then works with families and teachers to oversee small, temporary groups of struggling students. The meetings usually take place during the “special” class period, such as an art class, she said.

There, students will talk about what they need in the classroom, decompress and plan strategies for them best to succeed.

Glaude then continues the individual investment by checking in during classroom learning times and working with families to update them on progress made.

The net effect of the system? Proactivity, said Schumacher.

And, there are real, quantifiable improvements, he said.

Disciplinary referrals for instances like fighting or major disruptions have plummeted since Elkhart began its school-wide mindfulness exercises during the 2018-2019 school year, down to about 50 from 300 the year before.

Schumacher also said the school is seeing an academic breakthrough.

The school had consistently earned somewhat high ratings from the state Department of Education, he said, but recently, the school’s fifth-grade class has seen spikes in reading literacy and math test scores.

He said the improvement is unparalleled in his quarter-century of working in schools.

“I hope this becomes a model so that more schools have this opportunity,” he said of mental health staffing. “Because this one person – that costs “x” number of dollars – has changed the dynamic of an entire 550-kid school. I’ve never seen anything do that that quickly – ever.”