The Warren School Board met for its monthly meeting on Monday, July 22. The board made a motion to approve the minutes from the previous month’s meeting. All were in favor. The financial report was then presented. A motion was made to approve the financial report, and all were in favor.
Karen Burnette who is with DHS then made a presentation to the board. She opened her presentation by thanking the board for allowing her to speak. With Burnette were Robin Ingram and Karen Lang. Burnette spoke about a grant that DHS has provided. She said Warren School District is among five sites in Arkansas that have been selected and recommended by the Department of Education based on positive practices that they have seen in the district. Burnette went on to explain that the project she is working on is a prevention project.
“It’s not just a school district project,” Burnette said. “It’s a community project.”
Last year DHS spent $300 million on children’s mental health services, and they aren’t certain that they are getting what they need for those children and families. One of the projects targets young children who are at risk of losing placement due to challenging behaviors. Examples of the placement might be an elementary classroom, childcare setting, or a child’s home.
Another piece of the project focuses on children who are in a type of major transition. Examples may be older children who have had a connection with the juvenile justice system or residential treatment facility and are coming back into the community.
The third piece of the project is focused on trying to create capacity out of local communities to be able to perform good diagnostic evaluations on children. With the entire project, DHS wants to get an accurate diagnosis for children who may have underlying mental health issues that may have been overlooked or misdiagnosed.
“One thing we’re asking is what are the needs in this community to support children and families who maybe have not been able to access before,” Burnette said.
Burnette also said that Medicaid has said that at the end of the project if there are innovative ways to render services that it doesn’t have funding streams for, it wants to make the necessary changes in policies so that communities can receive the help that they need.
“We want to create in the system ways for people to get reimbursed for the time that they spend doing the necessary things,” Burnette said. “We should be able to compensate that team for the time that they spend planning and trying to execute those sorts of recommendations.”
With the grant, 100 percent of the funding would be provided and make it possible for the school district to hire two staff members to help facilitate help for students and families who need it.
The pilot for the program is one year and will start in the 2024/2025 school year. However, there may not be a guarantee that the grant will continue to provide funds year after year. As of right now, the grant can be up to $700,000.
The school board then made a motion to approve an action contingent upon what attorneys say. All voted in favor.
Rosalinda Ellis then presented the monthly report for Brunson.
“We may not be exactly where we want to be, but the growth was incredible,” Ellis said.
The board then went into an executive session.
Other items that were covered were vehicle insurance renewals, approval of milk and bread bids for the upcoming 2024/2025 school year, approval of proposed budget of expenditures beginning July 1, 2025, approval of handbook changes, approval of student transfers, and approval of the teacher and administrator recruitment and retention plan. The board also voted to appoint A’Seneque Daniels to fill the vacancy in zone three until the next school board election.
The meeting was then adjourned.
