As more students face mental health issues, Powell schools are offering more support, adding a new counseling position next school year.

“There’s never been a time where mental health has been more in the spotlight than it is right now,” said Jay Curtis, superintendent of Park County School District No. 1. “We’ve seen a rise in many, many at-risk behaviors [and] mental health issues — depression and anxiety are at all-time highs right now. Our district response needs to be appropriate for those rising needs of our students.”

The additional counselor will serve students at Powell High School and the Shoshone Learning Center (SLC), dividing time between the two schools. Currently, PHS has two counselors, while a single counselor serves students at the SLC, Parkside Elementary School and Clark Elementary School. Starting next year, that position will focus only on Parkside/Clark.

For more than a year, Superintendent Curtis and school board members have discussed the need for additional counselors, making social/emotional and mental health a key part of the district’s safety/security plan adopted last year. It’s also been a priority for Curtis.

“I think it is one of the next keys to unlock learning for a lot of students — it’s just such a barrier for a bunch of kids,” he said.

The superintendent attended a conference earlier this month where a speaker said the depression rate among high school teens is 40% higher than it was 10 years ago, with similar trends in anxiety rates. Curtis called it “a staggering number.”

“You’ve got to do something about it,” he said. “When they’re dealing with those things, it’s too big for them to handle alone.”

Like the rest of rural America, he said northern Wyoming lacks mental health services.

“The school then really has to take a little bit of that burden and try to do something about it, so that we can help our kids learn at their best,” Curtis said.

Currently, the district has about 9 1/2 mental health professionals, he said. National guidelines, he said, recommend one counselor for every 250 students, one social worker for every 400 and one school psychologist for every 1,000. That would mean about 14 mental health professionals in the Powell district, but “I am certainly not proposing that we go to that level and add four positions,” Curtis said.

Under the new structure, each elementary school will have a full-time counselor, which is close to the recommended levels by national standards, he said. An assessment showed the greatest needs were at the high school level, Curtis said.

Counselor Erin Curtis, who currently serves Parkside/Clark/SLC students, will take on the new SLC/PHS position next year.

Each of the schools expressed a desire to have Erin Curtis, who is married to superintendent Curtis, as a counselor. She had the option of choosing between Parkside and the SLC, since “she had a foot in each of those jobs,” the superintendent said.

“I just let them work that out,” he said, adding, “She worked with all three principals — the high school, SLC and Parkside — to determine the best fit.”

As for the opening for a counselor at Parkside/Clark, it was advertised within the district. During its March 10 meeting, the school board will consider transferring Darwin Rowton to the position, starting next school year. Rowton previously worked as a special ed teacher and middle school intervention counselor. For the last seven years, he has been the district case manager/parent liaison.

Meanwhile, the district has struggled to contract with psychologists this year.

“Finding school psychologist services has been extremely challenging,” Curtis told the board earlier this month. “... We’ve searched high and low for additional contract services, to no avail. It is putting an undue burden on the staff that we currently have.”

To help alleviate some of that burden, the school board unanimously approved adding a “teacher on special assignment” who will help with required testing for special education students.

The number of children within the Powell district who are on an individualized education plan (IEP) has risen, and each student must undergo academic testing and cognitive testing under a strict timeline. While a school psychologist will continue to do the cognitive portion, a trained teacher can do the academic side, Curtis said.

The psychologist will still interpret the results, but a teacher in the new full-time position — a special education diagnostician assistant — will help take the time burden off the psychologist.

“We’re trying to throw them a lifeline,” Curtis said.

The new position will be paid for with money already set aside for contract services for psychology and grant funding.

“It’s really a no-budget impact request at this point, but it would sure help our special ed department,” Curtis said. “They are under so much stress right now.”

The Powell school board unanimously approved the new position at its Feb. 10 meeting, and it is being advertised internally in the district.

“I am extraordinarily pleased that the board all recognizes the importance of mental health and the social emotional well-being of our students in supporting our requests to add some [employees] to help us with that,” Curtis said.