How Carson City Schools are dealing with behavioral issues, supporting students in transition and more

Carson City School Board Trustees heard an update regarding the districts Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS) program, and how it is working to help students achieve goals on social/emotional, academic, and behavioral levels.

During this school year there are nearly 260 McKinney-Vento students in transition, which means that they do not have a fixed, regular, adequate plan to sleep at night. This includes children living in motels, cars, shelters, campgrounds, public places, or those who are “doubling up” and sharing housing with others due to loss of housing from economic hardship.

The majority fall into the latter category of doubling up with 207 students sharing housing. Nearly 30 students are living in hotels or motels, eight are in shelters or transitional housing, and 13 students are unsheltered.

According to Christie Perkins, director of grants and special projects,, there are also currently 22 students actively in foster care placements, the majority of which are in elementary school.

The district provides transportation to their school of origin or gas reimbursement for foster families if students are able to stay at their original school even if moving over county lines.

The McKinney-Vento program provides services for all age levels, including everything from coats during the annual coat drive, to new shoes, weekly food bags on Fridays from Food for Thought, cap and gown, yearbook and prom help for seniors, therapy coverage for those uninsured, enrollment in Boys and Girls Club, a new laptop for college and much more.

Combating behavior issues

The district has taken a number of steps to reduce behavioral issues within schools.

One new approach is through the District Intervention Assistance Team (DIAT).

Essentially DIAT comes into play when a student is referred to the program for major behavioral issues that cannot be dealt with by site staff alone. They can be referred by a principal, social worker, counselor, teacher, or any other staff member on site.

This year, 35 students were referred to the DIAT program, and now, there are only eight currently active cases: four at the elementary school level, two at the middle school level, and two at the high school level.

“We’ve heard from our schools and from the community: ‘We need help. We don’t have the tools in our toolbox to manage some of these extreme behaviors,’” Perkins said.

When sites have exhausted everything they know how to do, the DIAT team is brought in. Team members include everything from social workers to counselors, law enforcement to McKinney-Vento representatives, and everything in between.

After learning about the student, the team comes up with an individualized plan for each student whether it’s partnering with different resources, or simply having the student check in every morning with a counselor as soon as school begins to start their day off right.

So far, the program has been a success.

“As a district, before, we may have just said you’re suspended, you’re expelled, you’re out,” Perkins said. “We can’t do that now. The laws have changed, it’s not best practice, and typically it doesn’t change the behaviors.”

Beside the eight active cases, the rest of the cases have been closed and students are reportedly engaging back in school and behavior issues have decreased according to Perkins.

Behavioral issues will also seem to trend down due to how the district will categorize issues moving forward.

Specifically, the district will categorize issues based on major and minor behavioral concerns.

For example, Perkins said, a student could have been sent to the office to speak to a dean for a minor behavioral problem such as forgetting a pencil. This could lead to a major classroom disruption and loss of instructional time.

Now, the district is working with teachers on how to differentiate between major and minor behavioral instances, and when students should be removed from the classroom.

This way of categorizing has already begun at Carson Middle School, and Perkins said they are already seeing significant decreases in referrals to the office, and they are increasing the amount of time students spend in class learning.

Project AWARE

Thanks to community partnerships, the Carson City School District is currently leading the state compared to both urban and rural districts with how it has taken on mental health issues according to Stephanie Keating, the MTSS coordinator for the district.

This is thanks to Project AWARE, the purpose of which is to develop sustainable infrastructure for school-based mental health services.

This includes building partnerships with the State Education Agency (SEA), Local Education Agency (LEA), the State Mental Health Agency (SMHA), community based providers of behavioral health care services, school personnel, community organizes, families, and students.

“Currently the district is one of the leading districts in our state that has been able to do this, and we have out surpassed multiple other districts both urban and rural,” Keating said.

Through the program, students are connected to “appropriate and effective” behavioral health services.

For next year, the district will also be bringing in “Harmony,” an evidence-based social emotional learning curriculum from Stanford University that is free for districts to implement. This will be rolled out in elementary schools first.

Among other initiatives, the district will also utilize MTSS teams and school social workers to provide universal screeners to support early detection of mental health issue. The screeners will be issued three times per year.

The full presentation can be viewed here.