White Schools Focused On Physical, Mental Health

White County Schools will emphasize recognition for staffers who work with students on their physical and mental health during the coming school year.

“School Health Heroes” will serve as the theme for the new school year, according to Director of Schools Kurt Dronebarger. He said students and teachers deal with mental health challenges that may not have been as prevalent years ago.

“We just wanted to kind of raise awareness to that and recognize people that are making our schools healthy,” Dronebarger said. “Whether it’s school nutrition, or maybe its emotional health, and maybe talking about anti-bullying campaigns. It opens a lot of doors to really celebrate some people that are doing some great things in our schools.”

Dronebarger said he settled on the theme after polling administrators and teachers to learn what challenges they have been facing in schools. He said the district has made a series of steps in the right direction through new programs that offer health resources to those who need them.

“It’s just hard these days,” Dronebarger said. “There’s a lot of pressures, whether that’s social media or what it is, but there’s just a lot of things that people are dealing with that we didn’t deal with 20 years ago.”

He said Care Solace allows teachers, students, and their families to receive counseling. He said the school board approved the addition of ABA therapists who will be coming into schools and working with students with significant behavioral needs.

“That emotional health and some of the physical health that we see with some of our students and just health in general kind of came to the top and said, ‘That’s an area we want to focus on,'” Dronebarger said.