The school environment is safe and secure and students are equipped with the skills to confidently navigate their complex lives.
Goal: Implement board-approved recommendations from the district safety and security task force, including expansion of the SIRO/SPO program.
- The district augmented its School Information and Resource Officer (SIRO) program with four special patrol officers (SPOs) so that each school building has at least one assigned officer. Of the seven officers working with the district, the district’s three SIROs are active duty Town of Manlius police officers assigned to serve the school district, and the four special patrol officers are peace officers hired by the town to serve the district.
- Each school district employee has been given access to a “panic button” that they can quickly and silently enable in the event of an emergency. When enacted, the alert system directly notifies local first responders and law enforcement agencies that assistance is urgently required. Even though the system was implemented in 2021-22, it is in compliance with the recently enacted Alyssa’s Law that requires district-wide safety teams to consider the installation of a panic alarm system as part of their annually required review of district-wide safety plans.
Goal: Design and develop learning spaces that support student inquiry, innovation and collaboration.
- Each of the three elementary schools created new bilingual spaces within their libraries to support students whose first language is a language other than English, as well as expose students to other languages. Each space has 100-200 books in a variety of languages, including Spanish, Japanese, American Sign Language and Turkish.
- Wellwood Middle School’s transformation through the 2017 capital project included the creation of several flexible learning spaces and project-based classrooms.
Goal: Enhance mental health instruction and develop social-emotional learning opportunities to support all students in an inclusive and flexible school setting.
- The district established a partnership with CNY Mental Health Counseling for mental health services for F-M students referred there by the district’s school counselors. School counselors, psychologists and family-school liaisons created a referral process to support students and their families. Each student referral includes up to three sessions with licensed counselors to triage the situation and make a referral as needed.
- Fayetteville Elementary School became the newest addition to the district’s therapy dog program, joining F-M High School and Enders Road Elementary School. Our certified therapy dog program provides social-emotional support to students by helping with emotional regulation, and by serving as a reading buddy for younger students.
- Wellwood Middle School piloted the Student Risk Screening Scale to identify students who would benefit from additional social-emotional support. The counseling staff and administrative team reviewed the data and identified social-emotional interventions for students ranging from individual counseling, small group lunch groups, mentoring and monitoring. Enders Road Elementary also piloted a similar instrument at the elementary level as the district plans to roll out similar screening tools to each of its other four schools.
- Third-grade Mott Road Elementary School students participated in Project TEAM Day, a hands-on learning event that stands for Teaching Everyone at Mott. The day focused on increasing student awareness about disabilities and encouraged social interactions between students of all abilities. The stations were led by presenters who have specialized knowledge of the topics presented.
- F-M High School’s counseling team participated in a two-day training in November with the state Office of Mental Health for the “Creating Suicide Safety in Schools” framework with the goal of establishing helpful, accessible, standardized plans for effective suicide prevention and response planning. In May and June, the district partnered with Contact Community Services to offer a suicide prevention and awareness program for all high school students.
- Wellwood launched a staff-to-student mentoring program, called Support Squad. Over 30 faculty members volunteered to serve as a mentor providing one-on-one support to a total of 32 students.
Goal: Investigate building programs and schedules that enrich student health and wellness and promote the development of the whole child.
- Mott Road instituted the Positivity Project at all grade levels, with grade-level activities, class lessons and civic engagement projects. The Positivity Project is a national non-profit organization dedicated to helping youth build stronger relationships by recognizing character strengths in themselves and others.
- F-M High School incorporated 20-minute Wellness Breaks in every high school student’s daily class schedule. Students reported that they used the time to eat, relax, check their phones, do homework or study for afternoon classes, talk to their friends and begin homework from morning classes. It gave them a needed break during the day so they could recharge and continue with their school day.