The Sheboygan Area School District (SASD) recently applied for the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act: Stronger Communities Grant and was awarded the maximum amount of $400,000 from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.

The grant is designed to support safe and healthy learning environments for students. The Sheboygan Area School District’s project proposal focuses on emotional well-being and will fund deeper collaborations with community partners that work with the SASD to support students.

The District demonstrated the need for these services using internal data from the b.e.s.t. Universal Screening, Panorama Student Survey results, attendance patterns, and discipline referrals.

For the last several years, the Sheboygan Area School District, in partnership with United Way of Sheboygan County, has offered in-school mental health therapy through the PATH (Providing Access To Healing) program. Demand for the services has continued to grow, with about 200 students currently in the program and 125 students on the waiting list.

The grant will fund an expansion of the PATH program to hire a part-time therapist who will provide parent and family therapy, a new addition to the program within our schools. The goal of this program expansion is to help students' families develop emotional strength and the capacity and tools to better support their children.

A new strategy that will also be funded through the grant is a partnership with The Production Farm located in Sheboygan Falls. The Production Farm offers mental and behavioral health therapy in nontraditional ways that align with a student's interests. For instance, therapy sessions may involve fishing or cooking or could even take place in the music room. The Production Farm will provide three levels of services for SASD students, including more intensive, off-site one-on-one support, small group off-site sessions, and on-site classroom-based lessons and skill-building.

The last initiative of the grant is implementing Sources of Strength, an evidence-based suicide prevention program for grades 6-12. This program uses peer social networks to create healthy norms and shape a positive student culture, building resiliency and increasing students’ sense of belonging to prevent suicide, violence, and bullying.

“While all students will benefit from universal approaches featured by our project, it was designed to increase equitable access to services, resources, and supports for our most under-resourced students, including those living with the stressors of poverty, household dysregulation, and trauma, students experiencing poor mental health, and the roughly 300 students having significant difficulty regulating emotions and behaviors,” said Jason Ledermann, Director of Special Education and Pupil Services.

This is a two-year grant, and implementation will begin in the fall of 2024.