‘Culture for caring’ critical to students’ mental health

The Christopher A. Coluccio Foundation held their second annual schools meeting at the Bayport firehouse on Tuesday, March 18.

Founder Christopher Coluccio, who was the father to the organization’s namesake, said that the foundation, “through the grace of our community has been able to give back. We want to break down barriers that we saw between all so we can speak to each other.”

The evening invited school districts and outreach groups because “they were doing great things so we could tackle this epidemic together,” according to Coluccio.

“The coalitions work together; we are always looking for this, to talk about what’s not working,” said Coluccio.

Bayport-Blue Point School District superintendent, Dr. Timothy Hearney, opened his presentation by saying, “Everything that we do, the community is partners with us. That’s the best thing about this community, is that it’s a family.”

Hearney addressed the multiple student suicides at BBP three years ago, referring to the matter as “a lot of tragedy” and “a lot of sadness.”

Hearney said that the key to providing help for the students was to build a culture of caring for an everlasting effect.
“We want to build a culture as opposed to having a checklist of saying, ‘Yeah, we did this,’” said Hearney.

Central to this culture is Hearney’s longtime goal of every student in the district having a “go-to person.”

“We want the students to know we believe in you. The ‘belonging’ piece is the most important,” said Hearney. “It has become a part of our culture, not just a buzzword.”

In the past two years, staff and students have undergone training to become mentors with whole building retreats.

The goal of this is to foster communication and coping skills for stress management.

“There are things teenagers go through now that we didn’t,” said Hearney.

Another budding program that the BBP School District is working on with the SCPD is Handle With Care, where police officers would let school personnel know of incidents like a home dispute so that school staff could refer them to the proper support system. “Sometimes a student’s go-to person was someone they had years ago and maybe that teacher didn’t realize they were struggling—the idea that a student had loss of a dog, their parents had a fight—as soon as someone knew, all that info got to anyone who had contact with that child,” said Hearney. 

“The students’ mental wellbeing is constantly changing along with needs, emotional management, and developing relationships,” said Hearney.

Dr. Joanne Pisani, director of student services at Connetquot School District said, “[We are] pretty proud of the work we have done. We are still working, constantly reviewing, evaluating, and assessing to support the mental health of our students.”

Connetquot has a Mental Health Advisory Council as well as a mental health support staff team of 16, including social workers, psychologists, and guidance counselors.

“The more we can do as a community, the more we can help,” said Pisani.

“The council is a really important part of the program,” said Pisani of the 31 members that includes members of the SCPD, board of education, nurses, and social workers.

Pisani said the approach to mental health education was a framework, with multiple components to help students learn to help themselves when in crisis.

PM Pediatrics has provided mental health education for the Connetquot staff with special attention to de-escalation techniques as elementary school teachers reported more incidents where students in general education, who had not yet been identified as needing special education, were having a difficult time acclimating to a traditional school environment.

In its third year, PM Pediatrics has received over 250 calls from grades K-12, which Pisani said highlighted the extent of the need for mental health intervention.