The Rockwood School District has been focusing on student’s mental health this school year, because of several deaths among students and staff, not to mention the stress of the pandemic.
At least seven people connected to the district have died since classes started Aug. 23.
Kiley Kennedy, who was a senior at Eureka High School, and Ethan
Sandhu, who attended Eureka High before transferring to a different district, were murdered.
Former Marquette students Jake Keifer and Rhegan Sajben died in a car crash.
Three staff members have died: Bob Wilhite, a Crestview Middle School band teacher; Amy Gentry, a Woerther Elementary School PE teacher; and Carl Hudson, a Marquette High School assistant principal.
Terry Harris, Rockwood director of student services, said he has dealt with someone’s death in each of his 16 years in the district, but he said he has never had to deal with this many deaths in a single school year.
“I’ve never experienced a kid who was connected to our district that was murdered,” he said. “In fact, we had two of those kids.”
Todd Minichiello, who coordinates school counseling for kindergartners through high school seniors, said students seem to be handling the circumstances well, but many need help dealing with the tragedies. He said some students’ mental health have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and other societal factors.
“Kids are resilient, wonderful, fantastic, hilarious and strong, but they are being put through things that we haven’t ever had to deal with,” Minichiello said. “They are afraid and have anxiety and worries. Nobody in Rockwood has ever seen anything like this. We had three staff members pass away in December alone. That’s just unheard of.”
Harris said the district is working to teach students how to deal with loss.
“A healthy grieving process has to start with healthy emotional language,” he said. “We have to keep teaching kids emotional literacy, as early as preschool, so that they can identify how they feel. Then they can start to advocate for what they need in order to get in balance based on those skills.”
Stress factors
Harris said one thing adding to emotional stress is outside of Rockwood’s control.
“Where the politics are at this point is extremely divisive,” he said. “We’ve always had Democrats. We’ve always had Republicans. We’ve always had independents. We’ve always had those people, and they didn’t agree on many things at all. That’s the point of having these separate parties, but it hasn’t been this nasty.”
Harris said he believes the added stress of high attendance at board meetings is affecting students and staff members.
“This consistent 100-200 people come into a board meeting over the last two years with signs, we’ve never had that,” he said. “When the governing body of your district is stressed, then you have the cabinet, which is the highest administrators in the district, they’re stressed. Then you have the teachers who are stressed, and eventually, that trickles down to the students.”
Harris said he believes if people started to communicate in a healthy way, some of the stress would lessen.
“I do know that we can do something about individuals coming to board meetings and behaving a certain way. I do know that we can do something about people treating teachers nicer,” he said. “I do know that we can do something about creating healthy discourse.”
Providing help
Minichiello said after a tragic accident or death happens, a crisis plan is put in place.
He said a team is formed to determine how to communicate with students and staff and how to provide grief support, which includes using the district’s counselors and social workers.
He said after a tragedy, additional staff are directed to the schools most affected by the events, and sometimes, the district will bring in community agencies to help students.
Minichiello said students and employees have the opportunity to participate in one-on-one or group counseling.
“(Group counseling is) very popular with adolescents,” he said. “They like to help each other through it, and it’s positive.”
Minichiello said many students like to maintain their regular routine after a loss, but others need to take a break from their routine.
“The message that we always start with is that it’s OK not to be OK, and we further that by saying, grief, anxiety, stress or depression – everybody’s is a little different,” he said.
Minichiello said some tools available to students to help deal with mental issues are coloring, games and playing with toys. He said at the high school level, a memorial book is created for students to write in and that book is given to the parents or family of the student who died.
David Morrison, Rockwood’s communication coordinator, said therapy dogs are available to help students at Pond Elementary in Wildwood, Crestview Middle in Ballwin and Marquette High in Chesterfield. Students at LaSalle Springs Middle have access to a dog that is training to help veterans and first-responders deal with post-traumatic stress disorders, he said.
Harris said a program through Hazel Health called HEART (Hazel’s Early Assessment, Response and Treatment) will be available to students next school year. Hazel Health is a health care service that provides physical and behavioral health care for students.
Harris said HEART is similar to the district’s employee assistance program, which provides mental health and wellness care for staff members. He said HEART services will be available virtually, and school staff will refer students to the services if school services are not available, a short-term solution is needed or for other reasons.
Eureka High Principal Corey Sink said students at his school were asked to take a social emotional learning survey this past fall and will retake the survey in the spring.
“We use that information as a kind of a dipstick to gauge the pulse of what’s going on around the building, if the things that we’re doing are helping or what are we missing,” he said.
Sink said one change at Eureka High this year has been doing away with the Wellness Day and having more opportunities for wellness activities. Wellness Day was a full day for students to focus on nature walks, coloring books, yoga and other activities.
He said instead of just one day, wellness activities are offered during the twice-weekly academic lab period. Sink said any student who wants to can participate in wellness activities.
“We found that has been very beneficial,” Sink said
High school program
Harris said the district has implemented or is implementing a program for high school students to deal with suicide, depression, anxiety and other mental-health issues.
The program, which started in 2021 at Lafayette High School, is called Youth Mental Health First Aid. Harris said Rockwood Summit also has the program in place, and it is being implemented at Eureka and Marquette this semester.
Harris said juniors and seniors at the schools can choose to be part of three 90-minute sessions that help them develop skills to help and support their peers dealing with mental-health issues.
Minichiello said the program has been producing good results.
“What they’re doing is learning how to become better listeners and more aware of kids in crisis, so that they can help their friends get help,” Minichiello said.
New face at Eureka
Eureka High recently had an open social worker position filled when April Welch joined the staff on Jan. 3, Minichiello said.
“It is a vital, vital role to any school to be able to operate the best they can,” Sink said.
Welch said she is ready to help students who might be going through a rough period.
“Honestly, it’s not just Rockwood, but our entire country and possibly the world, we’re all just kind of under a ton of pressure,” she said. “It’s been accumulating over the course of a couple of years, and then especially within Rockwood dealing with loss, dealing with tragedy and dealing with some of these crises, it’s been compounded.”
She said her first goal at Eureka High is getting to know students and sharing what services she can provide.
“My first line of defense is to really start advertising that I’m in the building and how they can find me and what I can help with,” said Welch, whose children attend school in Rockwood.