Officials seek to help Cape Girardeau students connect with faculty, each other

Cape Girardeau Public Schools officials, in response to the nation's "alarming" mental health crisis among teenagers, are developing a program to help students find connection with each other and district faculty and staff.

Brice Beck

Brice Beck

Brice Beck, deputy superintendent of K-12 education, said a pilot survey of all the school district's junior high and freshman students has been conducted.

Beck said the survey focused on three primary concepts: Does the student have a trusted mentor or adult at their school? Is the student involved in extracurricular activities or after-school programming? Does the student know how to access resources across the district that they might need for themselves or their family?

Beck said research shows positive relationships, good mentoring and involvement in activities provide tremendous benefits for a student's mental health and their personal growth.

"If a kid doesn't have trusted adults, they don't participate in anything, and then they don't know how to get resources. That's a big red flag coming out for us that we need to make sure we're having conversations with that student," Beck said.

Beck said the results of the survey showed a near 50/50 split on each question.

"This is valuable information," Beck said. "With this initial round, we wanted to see what kind of feedback we would get and make sure we manage the feedback for follow-up moving forward."

Beck said it was "great news" that the survey showed 50% of Cape Girardeau Public Schools students do feel like they have trusted adults, "Which speaks volumes about our staff and their ability to build relationships with the kids."

Beck said the survey framed a "trusted adult" as someone — a teacher, coach or counselor — the student has a good relationship with who they could go to if they needed help.

"It could be any of our staff," Beck said. "It could be a custodian that talks to somebody every day and builds a great relationship with the kid in the school."

Beck said the survey asked students to name their trusted adult, and they were able to give that information to the principals to connect the staff members with those students "because they may not know they're a trusted adult."

He said the survey results also allowed them to see the other 50% of students who don't have a trusted adult at their school, and they can work to connect those students through the mentoring programming that has been established.

Beck said along with the full-time counselors and social workers on staff, the district will bring in mentors from Big Brothers Big Sisters of Eastern Missouri. He said the district uses multiple mentoring models — one-on-one or small to large groups — depending on a student's particular need.

Beck said it was also positive to see that 50% of students do know how to obtain district resources, such as food, hygiene products and counseling services for themselves and/or their families.

"That's great to know and highlights the work that our social workers are doing across the district," Beck said.

For those who answered they do not know how to obtain those resources, Beck said the survey gave students the opportunity to list their needs.

"Those responses were steered toward the Special Services Department," Beck said. "Then, our team of social workers that are in that student's building can make sure the student gets the help they need."

Beck said faculty members will have conversations with the 50% of students who said they were not involved in school clubs or extracurricular activities to find out why and encourage them to take advantage of what the district offers.

Beck said the survey will expand this coming 2023-24 school year to cover all students in grades five through 12.

"So, we'll be reaching roughly around 2,500 students," Beck said. "We should get some really good feedback to give us a good road map in providing our students with mentoring, mental health counseling or getting them plugged into an activity, whatever it may be."