Mental Health Assistance

Assessing & Monitoring Student Needs

Social-emotional skills such as goal setting, empathy and managing emotions are critical for students of all ages to be successful academically as well as in their lives and relationships. Beginning in the spring of 2021, the district began using the Behavior Intervention Monitoring Assessment System (Second Edition), or BIMAS-2, to help gauge where middle and high school students are in their social-emotional learning and help them grow. This tool will also be used to screen elementary students beginning in the 2021-22 school year.

This information will be used to assist individual students whose responses indicate they may be in crisis while also helping schools build and support programming that addresses social-emotional learning. Elementary students will participate with teacher/parent screeners with plans to also add a parent/teacher component for middle and high school students. Learn more about BIMAS-2.

Supporting Social-Emotional Learning

School and district staff are identifying and setting learning standards for social-emotional learning in grades K-12 for all RSD schools. This work will inform what curriculum and instructional materials are used to help students develop critical skills ranging from self-governance, empathy and relationship building.

Crisis Intervention

Each RSD school has a school-based crisis intervention team comprised of the assigned school psychologist, school nurse, school counselor(s), and a building administrator.  In addition, the district's Mental Health Assistance Team (MHAT) members serve as a flight team to provide additional support through school-based teams during an event-based crisis. They also support school-based teams when students are being assessed and may indicate they need immediate intervention.