BV schools awarded mental health grant

The Berryville School District board on Sept. 19 received what superintendent Owen Powell called exciting news, which could mean big things for students’ mental health.

Owen Powell

“Something that we’re really excited about is we were awarded the AWARE grant,” Powell said. “We’re the only school in the state awarded this grant this year. It’s a really big deal.”

The AWARE — Advancing Wellness And Resiliency in Education — grant is awarded to support districts in efforts to provide mental health care awareness and trauma informed practices. The project’s stated goals are to increase coordinated referrals, mental health services and programs and follow-up for children; increase outreach and engagement among youth, families, schools and communities in an effort to increase awareness, mental health identification and implementation of services and programs; and to develop the infrastructure that will sustain mental health among youth and maintain mental and behavioral health services when federal funding ends.

Powell explained that the grant will fund these efforts at the district for five years.

“It’s to help with behavior and mental health,” Powell said. “Its really about behavioral and mental health services. We’ll actually get two full-time employees — a behavior coach and a site project manager — that will be working in our school every day for the next five years. There’s a lot of training involved that we’ll be able to show the teachers, too, and obviously, these two will be training our staff as well.

“It’s a really big win for students and for our faculty and we’re just really proud that we got chosen for that.”

In other business, the board also voted to approve the district’s budget for the 2022-2023 school year. This year’s budget showed a beginning balance of $3,584,300.21, projected revenues of $19,076,700.67, projected expenditures of $17,983,480.01 and a projected ending balance of $4,498,306.54.

During the meeting, the board heard from middle school student Karson Casey, who made a presentation to the board regarding the possible establishment of a middle school student council.

“He did a really good job presenting the material,” Powell said. “It was unanimously approved by the board, so that’s that’s pretty exciting stuff there.”

Powell said this would be the first time the middle school had a student council, something that’s existed at the high school “for as long as I can remember.”

The board also approved a plan to purchase a new server to store video from campus surveillance cameras.

“ Our server for our camera system is just about to go down,” Powell said. “I think it’s about seven or eight years old. When you’re talking about technology, if it’s seven or eight years old, it’s pretty much a dinosaur. So it’s time for us to replace that and upgrade it.”

The new server, which will cost the district approximately $20,000, is one of two that collect data from the district’s cameras.

The board also voted to set the date for the Berryville High School’s Class of 2023 graduation ceremony, which will be held at 3 p.m. Sunday, May 21, at Bobcat Stadium. Graduation would shift to nearby Bobcat Arena in case of inclement weather.

In personnel matters, the board voted to hire Whitney Johnson as a special education interpreter paraprofessional, Micaela Romera as a paraprofessional, Bobbi Vaught as a special education bus aide, Trista Reed and Deidre Powell as cafeteria workers, Emily Keith as a substitute nurse, Sonia Isaac and Vickie Steward as substitute cafeteria workers and Amanda Carmen for a purchase service position in the child nutrition department.

The Berryville School Board’s next meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m., Monday, Oct. 17, at the district administration office.