Mental Health for All
Salud Mental Para Todos
In the Central School District, we believe that supporting mental health is everyone's job. This means that:
Our staff will work hard to practice, model and teach positive skills to promote wellbeing for ourselves and our students.
We will provide opportunities for staff to receive professional learning on topics that support mental health and wellbeing for all students.
We will normalize needing help sometimes and work to ensure that students and staff know how and who to ask for help when they need it.
We will refer students for further mental health supports and interventions when needed.
We will continuously work hard to create trauma-sensitive spaces that support connection, belonging, and healing.
We will continuously evaluate and improve our procedures for identifying students with greater mental health support needs and will work to provide additional support or refer students to community mental health providers as needed.
We will continue to build and grow community partnerships to ensure we are doing all that we can to support student mental health in our community.
The Central School District highly values the mental health and wellbeing of our students and staff as we support the learning needs of our students holistically.
Our Whole Child Program Coordinator is a Licensed Professional Counselor and is a member of the District Teaching and Learning Team. This helps us to ensure the integration of student wellness in all of our district level planning and systems development. We also partner with Polk County Family and Community Outreach to employ a full-time mental health therapist or wellness specialist in each of our school buildings, along with additional a full-time bilingual resource navigator serving the Central School District.
Central School District
Katie Finley, LCSW
Talmadge Middle School
School Based Mental Health Therapist