School Safety Interventions Solutions

Lander County School District (LCSD)  is a rural school district located in Northern Nevada. Our local law enforcement agency is the Lander County Sheriff's office. The rural vulnerability of our entire community and rural schools due to distance to a major medical community, and lack of community based mental health providers creates an imperative for preventing school based violence through improved school climate and community partnerships.Currently, qualified mental health providers in Lander County and surrounding communities are primarily employed by the school district. However, incidents of fights and conflicts at school, high rates of disabilities, high rates of students who have experienced trauma, and lack of a fully developed continuum of school-based interventions contribute to difficulty improving our system.

This proposal seeks to obtain funding to establish a system utilizing a district-community school safety advisory team as part of our multi-tiered system of support (MTSS).This team would include school officials, educators, law enforcement, community partners, parents, and student leaders to identify and support improvements in school climate through MTSS. Key partners for this project include the Frontier Community Coalition, Lander County Sheriff's office, University of Nevada-Reno, Kairos Recovery and Behavioral Health, and our school based behavioral health team. Sustainability for this project would be achieved through braiding Medicaid reimbursement dollars for screening and interventions.  The goal and intended outcome of this project is to increase the systematic and collaborative approach to preventing violence in our schools through the use of evidence based system development, teaming, and the hiring of additional school climate and behavioral health providers (school psychologist, school social worker/safe school professional, and school climate facilitator). Universal screening is a key strategy for implementing data based decisions in the selection of evidence based interventions. Training, coaching, and collaboration with partners increase the effectiveness of the proposed plan.