Funding mental health and student well-being

Immediately after the Marshall Fire, mental health professionals from surrounding school districts came to BVSD to work with impacted students and families. During this time, it became apparent that providing students with ongoing mental health support during the school day was the most effective way for Impact on Education to support their recovery.

Since January 2022 we’ve worked closely with BVSD staff to continue providing this additional level of support, which includes:

BVSD’s first wellness center

At Monarch High School, where 1 in 10 students was impacted by the Marshall Fire, a Wellness Center was created to support students in August 2022. Staffed by a full-time counselor, the Wellness Center provides students a safe place to recharge and speak with a trained professional during the school day. 

Wellness Center Impact
August – December 2022

How Mental Health Advocates are supporting students and families

Mental Health Advocates (MHAs) focus exclusively on mental and behavioral health, supplementing what BVSD school counselors can provide. Within BVSD, MHAs:

The intensity of mental health concerns and the time required to provide support and intervention varies dramatically from case to case. The additional MHAs ensure the schools impacted by the Marshall Fire have the intensive layer of mental health support needed, and expand the district’s capacity to respond to mental health needs.

Mental Health Advocate Impact

August – December 2022

Our funding priorities

Impact on Education is committed to providing an elevated level of mental health support for all students, especially those affected by the Marshall Fire. Meeting these three goals would allow us to serve 11,698 students at 12 schools across BVSD:

  1. Scaling the Wellness Center program by replicating the model to offer it at 5 BVSD high schools
  2. Retaining four MHAs supporting through the 2023-24 school year
  3. Providing mental health training and educational resources for students, families, and staff

Join us to ensure students have mental health supports available during the school day.

BEFORE YOU GO …

Impact on Education is a nonprofit organization, and we depend on our community to help us put our mission into action. We need your help to to provide opportunity and resources to 29,000 students and 4,000 educators in the Boulder Valley School District.

GIVE TODAY

Why our Marshall Fire support continues

In early 2022, we began supporting the immediate and long-term recovery of the Boulder Valley School District (BVSD) students and educators affected by the Marshall Fire. Our work has provided:

To see a full summary, please visit our Crisis Response page.

Prioritizing mental health

Immediately after the fire, mental health professionals from surrounding school districts came to BVSD to work with impacted students and families. During this time, we saw that providing students with mental health support during the school day was the most effective way to support their recovery. 

We worked closely with BVSD staff to continue providing an additional level of support. Impact on Education quickly enabled BVSD to hire four additional Mental Health Advocates (MHAs).

The new MHAs were hired in the spring of 2022 to support BVSD’s most impacted schools. They provided over 130 consultations and direct support to 93 families and 359 individuals and directed families to additional resources from Impact on Education, BVSD, and community partners, including:

Our partners with the Center for Disaster Philanthropy shared that six months after a disaster is often when the financial and emotional realities begin to sink in. Knowing these important moments would happen over the summer break, we allocated funding to ensure two MHAs could work over the summer to support 330 students.

Providing support during the 2022-23 school year

Mental Health

The MHAs continue to provide services at our most fire-affected schools. They provide students with consultations, family support, individual counseling, and support groups. MHAs also support the district Trauma Response teams and facilitate Resilience in Schools and Educators (RISE) sessions for educators and staff.

Financial and academic support

Early in the school year, we learned that families were continuing to experience or experiencing new financial challenges. We worked with BVSD to provide a way for families to request additional support, and are providing funding to cover the costs of school meals, transportation expenses to and from school, free virtual tutoring, and after school care.

Our work is not done

We know the needs of our community will continue and change through the 2023-24 school year. We are currently working on multiple ways to continue expanding the mental health services and resources available to both students and their families.

BEFORE YOU GO …

Impact on Education is a nonprofit organization, and we depend on our community to help us put our mission into action. We need your help to to provide opportunity and resources to 29,000 students and 4,000 educators in the Boulder Valley School District.

GIVE TODAY

3 ways we’re making a difference in 2023

Last year held many challenges for our community and our organization, but our commitment to creating opportunity for success, from preschool through graduation, supported BVSD students furthest from resources. If you haven’t already flipped through our 2022 Impact Report, we encourage you to see what we accomplished last year.

While we’re continuing to support recovery from the Marshall Fire, gearing up to recognize educators at the 2023 Impact Awards, planning our summer school supply distribution Crayons to Calculators, and preparing another round of our Academic Opportunity Fund, there are three important areas we’re excited to invest in this year.

1. Mental health and wellness

Our investment in four Mental Health Advocates supporting the schools most impacted by the Marshall Fire continues through the summer, and this spring we plan to offer educational opportunities for parents around adolescent and teen mental health. We’re also eager to start raising the funds to continue the Wellness Center at Monarch High School and expand it to BVSD’s other four large high schools (Broomfield, Centaurus, Fairview and Boulder) in the 2023-24 school year.

2. Career readiness

Over the next few months, we’re convening over 20 Career Readiness Academy workshops at three BVSD high schools. This program will help 60 students gain the skills, confidence and knowledge to pursue summer job and internship opportunities. Meanwhile, we are continuing to support the rollout of the GradPlus program. This includes identifying the improvements needed at BVSD’s middle and high schools to support career and technical education pathways and programs.

3. Early childhood education

This year our early learning program for incoming BVSD kindergarten students will shift to a four week, full-day program! We fund Kinder Bridge, now part of BVSD’s summer learning program, because access to early learning is not equitably available to all children who will enroll in the district. Kinder Bridge ensures 160 historically underserved students arrive prepared for school classrooms and excited to learn.

We hope you join us this year in supporting nearly 30,000 students in the Boulder Valley School District. Our work addresses systemic barriers and prioritizes those furthest from resources in order to equalize opportunity and bolster academic success.

Thank you for being part of our community and making investments to help us drive lasting change for students, educators, and our public schools.

BEFORE YOU GO …

Impact on Education is a nonprofit organization, and we depend on our community to help us put our mission into action. We need your help to to provide opportunity and resources to 29,000 students and 4,000 educators in the Boulder Valley School District.

GIVE TODAY

Schools and educators receive $245,000 in Academic Opportunity grants

Providing opportunity to BVSD students reduces the economic barriers to success. Our Academic Opportunity Fund provides resources to educators and schools through grants that enable all students to fully engage in learning.

Highlights of our second 2022-23 funding round

In the second round of the school year we received 65 applications to our Academic Opportunity Fund. So far we’ve been able to fully or partially fund 47 applications, distributing $68,000 to educators across the district, while we explore district and partnering funding options for some additional applications.

If you include our final round from the last school year, you’ll see that in 2022 we’ve:

What our schools are requesting

From the latest round, we received a variety of classroom- and school-based applications from schools across the district, including funding requests for:

A strong tie to our mission

The Academic Opportunity Fund directly supports our mission, allowing us to provide supplemental funding and resources to students and educators in order to expand what’s possible in education. 
Keep an eye on our Academic Opportunity Fund webpage for future funding rounds.

BEFORE YOU GO …

Impact on Education is a nonprofit organization, and we depend on our community to help us put our mission into action. We need your help to to provide opportunity and resources to 29,000 students and 4,000 educators in the Boulder Valley School District.

GIVE TODAY

Five ways we’re supporting the mental health of BVSD students and educators

Supporting the mental health of our students and educators is a critical need for our community. Impact on Education is committed to helping the Boulder Valley School District provide mental health support for students from kindergarten through graduation, and providing opportunities for educators to help both students and themselves. Having school-based support is critical to navigating mental health struggles and we’ve made five key investments in mental health so far this year:

Professional development for BVSD School Age Care staff

November 2021 and August 2022

School Age Care (SAC) supervisors and assistant supervisors serve a diverse group of students daily at 32 sites throughout Boulder Valley School District (BVSD). From grade levels to academic ability levels to emotional and behavioral health levels, SAC staff must manage each student’s needs and create a safe environment outside of school hours for students and staff. 

Impact on Education worked with Calming Kids to provide targeting professional development to 72 SAC staff who work with students before and after school. Participants gained self-regulation skills and learned how to better equip themselves to provide social-emotional support for all students.

RESeT Fairview Day

January 2022  |  Daily Camera article (paywall)

Fairview High School paused instruction for one day (January 7, 2022) and offered a day of conferences that focused on four areas: prevention/education, mental health, self care and leadership.

RESeT Fairview Day was a student-led conference funded by Impact on Education that allowed students to engage in a variety of training and learning activities. There were five sessions of over 40 presentations throughout the day making the content accessible to over 2,000 students. 

Four new BVSD Mental Health Advocates

May 2022  |  Daily Camera article (paywall)

Impact on Education provided funding for BVSD to hire four mental Health Advocate positions in the spring of 2022, a few months after the Marshall Fire. Within BVSD, Mental Health Advocates provide prevention and intervention services for students, supporting their social-emotional and behavioral development, student achievement, and crisis intervention.

Mental Health Advocates can also provide both group and individual counseling support and work directly with students, parents, and staff members. For more acute counseling needs, they help families access external resources for mental health. As a direct result of the Marshall Fire and the mental health impacts this is having on our community, we are working to immediately increase the mental health services available to BVSD students.

The four new Mental Health Advocates are assigned to the seven schools most directly impacted by the Marshall Fire, supporting 6,061 students. They’ve collectively expanded access to mental health services by 35%, providing over 130 consultations and offering direct support and services to 93 families and 359 individuals. 

Professional development for BVSD educators

November 2022

The mental health of educators and school staff directly impacts the students in their classrooms. Through our Academic Opportunity Fund we were able to fund two school requests to support mental health needs at their schools.

At Monarch PK-8, Beth Kelley, author of Teaching, Learning and Trauma, will conduct two professional learning sessions focused on helping‌ ‌teachers‌ ‌respond‌ ‌to‌ ‌students‌ ‌who‌ ‌are‌ ‌dysregulated‌, strategies‌ ‌to‌ ‌avoid‌ ‌retriggering‌ students‌, and identifying ‌‌where‌ ‌students are ‌in‌ ‌their‌ ‌own‌ ‌transition, grief, or trauma‌. Beth also joined sessions for students dealing with trauma and worked directly with students experiencing higher levels of trauma.

We also provided funding for Centaurus High School to improve school wide behavior interventions targeted at addressing school culture, supporting psychological needs and addressing truancy through the Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) lens. 

All Advocates for All Youth program 

Program launches in 2023

In partnership with Dr. Jill Kaar, a behavioral epidemiologist at CU-Anschutz Medical School, Impact on Education is supporting the implementation of the All Advocates for All Youth (ALLY) program in several Boulder Valley middle schools. 

The ALLY program pairs community volunteers with middle school students for six 1:1 sessions. The discussions will provide students with a mental health curriculum that includes a common vocabulary around behavioral health, destigmatizing mental health intervention, and supporting emotional wellness.

BEFORE YOU GO …

Impact on Education is a nonprofit organization, and we depend on our community to help us put our mission into action. We need your help to to provide opportunity and resources to 30,000 students and 4,000 educators in the Boulder Valley School District.

GIVE TODAY

There are many ways to support student learning

We received over 100 applications in the first round of our Academic Opportunity Fund this year and initial award decisions were shared earlier this month. Thanks to a wonderful team of 24 great readers, we’ve been able to fully or partially fund 73 of these applications, investing over $112,000 to support BVSD students. 

OPPORTUNITY FOR STUDENTS

Our Academic Opportunity Fund provides funding to meet the needs of students, educators and classrooms across the district. From Cal-Wood scholarships to transportation expenses to software licenses, we fund a variety of requests that will enable students to engage in learning.

School-based tutoring for Adelante! students

Over 150 first-generation Latinx students at Boulder and Fairview High School have been disproportionately impacted by COVID and need support to get back on track. An Academic Opportunity Fund grant will pay for tutors to help students enrolled in the Adelante! Program during and after school. Adelante! encourages and inspires college and career readiness for first-generation and low-income students.

Tutors will offer personalized support based on student needs and will provide subject area tutoring and college application preparation. Adelante has a proven track record of re-engaging students in their pursuit of education and bolsters post-secondary readiness in the areas of college and career.

The need for tutoring and coaching to complete college and scholarship applications is particularly urgent at Boulder High School because the school has seen a dramatic increase in students who qualify for the free and reduced lunch program and an increase in Latinx, mostly first-generation English speaking, students. Both schools have noted that there is a serious gap in pursuing higher education between the majority and minority student populations. The Adelante program has traditionally offered tutoring in addition to standardized test prep, essay reviews, workshops on filling out applications and scholarship applications.

Art therapy for middle school students

Like many schools across the district, Centennial Middle School has seen an increased need for mental health support. With limited mental health resources available their part-time school psychologist and school counselors asked for funding to bring a local art therapist to their students.

The funding will allow the school to engage the art therapist, providing an additional trusted adult for students, and support the purchase of supplies. This additional mental health support will help students interpret and express their emotions and thoughts so they’re better equipped to focus on learning at school.

Educational field trips

Young AmeriTowne is an award-winning educational program to help students learn about business and economics in a fun and hands-on way. 44 fourth graders at Alicia Sanchez Elementary are now able to take a field trip to Young AmeriTowne next spring.

Coal Creek fifth graders will participate in their annual field trip to Cal-Wood this school year. The school PTA subsidizes the class trip, but families are asked to contribute $100 per student. We’re covering this cost for 14 families for whom the $100 will be a hardship, 8 families in financial need and 6 families affected by the Marshall Fire.

Helping students develop their STEM identity

At Boulder High School, AP chemistry students have access to supplies like PH sensors and direct drop counters to develop their own experiments. In other chemistry courses that occur outside of block periods, the logistics of sharing these supplies in quick succession means that students who are not enrolled in AP level courses don’t have access to this experience.

Not all students will take AP level courses and the fees can be a barrier to participation for students in financial need. In order to offer similar learning opportunities to all students, we’re providing funding for chemistry supplies that will allow more students to develop their STEM identity by deepening their interaction with these concepts.

OUR CONTINUED SUPPORT

We’re still working with BVSD to gather additional information to make funding decisions on some remaining applications from our first round. We always verify the grants we disperse are aligned with District goals and standards and that we are not funding projects that can be met by District or other community resources.

We just opened our application for a second round and applications are due on Monday, November 14, 2022.
To learn more or apply, click here.

BEFORE YOU GO …

Impact on Education is a nonprofit organization, and we depend on our community to help us put our mission into action. We need your help to to provide opportunity and resources to 30,000 students and 4,000 educators in the Boulder Valley School District.

GIVE TODAY

The Boulder Valley School District, Impact on Education, and CU Anschutz are partnering to offer a mental health literacy program—All Advocates for All Youth (ALLY)—to all 6th graders at Angevine Middle School. The program offers students the opportunity to engage in mental health awareness activities with volunteers in the fall of the 2022-23 school year.

Background-checked volunteers will participate in a self-paced 4-5 hour training before leading guided 1:1 sessions for 30 minutes with students on a weekly basis. 

The goal of this intervention is to provide support to all students by increasing their resilience and self-efficacy skills, and helping reduce their stress.

Volunteer commitment

This is a recurring commitment to regularly meet in-person at Angevine Middle for 2-4 hours every week for 6 weeks from October 1 through mid-November. Interaction with students requires that all volunteers pass a background check or renew an existing background check. All volunteers must also complete a 4-5 hour self-paced program training before September 25, 2022.

No prior experience is required to participate as a volunteer, but those able to commit to a set schedule for all 6 weeks or Spanish speaking volunteers are highly desired for this program.

Prior Ally volunteers in Colorado Springs, Colorado and Loachapoka, Alabama, reported enjoying this opportunity, often returning to the school to work with more students and citing improvements in their own mental health and wellbeing as a result of the volunteer experience.

Upcoming information sessions

No experience or special skills are required to participate, but community members are encouraged to attend a virtual information session to learn more about this volunteer opportunity. Four sessions will be offered on the following dates:

Register for a virtual information session here:
https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10c0f4da8a628a1f4c16-learn

How this will impact BVSD students

By working with an entire grade level of students, the All Advocates for All Youth program will provide the entire Angevine community with a skill set and vocabulary that allows them to address their needs with each other. This method helps destigmatize mental health intervention and doesn’t target students based on behavioral or other incidents. This is the third round of a CU Anschutz clinical study and students are able to opt-out.

Four ways we’re driving change in BVSD classrooms

Over the years, we’ve catalyzed change in the Boulder Valley School District by piloting initiatives and accelerating innovation in classrooms and schools. Right now, we’re seeing four recent investments driving change for students.

Early dyslexia intervention

In 2019, BVSD was working to roll out a new phonics-based curriculum in elementary schools and begin screening Kindergarten students to identify those at risk for dyslexia, but they lacked the funds to quickly train all educators. Impact on Education, in partnership with Boulder Valley Kids Identified with Dyslexia (BVKID), stepped in to fund professional development and training for 46 BVSD interventionists and classroom educators.

The training took place in the summer of 2020 and meant that during the 2020-21 school year, every school in BVSD had at least one interventionist who was trained in the Orton Gillingham approach to better support students. In 2021, IOE also supplemented BVSD’s educator training, but we are pleased to share that this summer, BVSD made their biggest investment to date for this critical training opportunity by funding 85 elementary educators to participate in the training.

Helping students catch up on reading and math

Every student experienced disrupted learning in 2020 and 2021, and many now need extra support with their reading and math skills.

Last year, we partnered with BVSD to invest in the Really Great Reading curriculum to help students build foundation skills in reading, and students made wonderful progress:

To catch students up on math skills, we funded licenses for IXL Math at several BVSD schools during the 2021-22 school year. The original request came through our Academic Opportunity Fund and was quickly adopted across the district leading to impressive results:

Seeing the success of these investments, BVSD is now funding the Really Great Reading curriculum more broadly throughout the district and paying for IXL Math access for all middle school students for the 2022-23 school year.

Preparing students for their futures

Beginning in 2019, we have worked in partnership with BVSD and external experts to build a vision of how to better prepare students for their futures. BVSD’s new GradPlus initiative is a direct result of the $40,000 investment we made to move this work forward and ensure BVSD has a solid roadmap and implementation plan to launch for the 2022-23 school year. GradPlus is a game changer in how BVSD will prepare students for their future and will make it far easier for students to gain credentials, work experience and post-secondary credit towards degrees while still in high school.

Driving change in BVSD

Catalytic change is one of our core values and it’s something we strive to do wherever possible. By investing in new tools for learning we’re providing new opportunities for students of all ages to see success in school.

BEFORE YOU GO …

Impact on Education is a nonprofit organization, and we depend on our community to help us put our mission into action. We need your help to to provide opportunity and resources to 30,000 students and 4,000 educators of the Boulder Valley School District.

GIVE TODAY

IOE funding expands mental health support for BVSD students and staff

This post is an updated version of this article posted on February 25, 2022.

Children’s Hospital Colorado declared a pediatric mental health state of emergency in May of 2021, citing skyrocketing demand for mental health services among Colorado’s youth. In addition to the well-documented impact of the pandemic on mental health, our community also experienced a mass shooting and Colorado’s most destructive wildfire in 2021. 

BVSD is committed to providing mental health support for students from kindergarten through graduation. For young learners, sharing feelings and learning to work through problems will be all they ever know, and for older learners, having school-based support is critical to navigating mental health struggles.

We’re investing over $800,000 to support the ongoing mental health needs of students and staff throughout the Boulder Valley School District.

Mental health professional development for BVSD staff

School Age Care (SAC) staff serve a diverse group of students daily at 32 sites throughout Boulder Valley School District (BVSD). From grade levels to academic ability levels to emotional and behavioral health levels, SAC staff must manage each student’s needs and create a safe environment outside of school hours for students and staff.

Impact on Education funded six hours of Calming Kids professional development for BVSD School After Care educators to teach them strategies for managing student mental health needs and their own. The first sessions were held in 2021 thanks to a partnership with the City of Boulder’s Housing and Human Services Department, and additional sessions are planned for 2022.

Expanding BVSD’s team of mental health advocates

In the Boulder Valley School District (BVSD), referrals of students to Mental Health Advocates have risen by 86% this school year compared to the same period during the 2020-21 school year. 

Mental Health Advocates supplement what BVSD’s school counselors can provide since their focus is exclusively on mental and behavioral health. Within BVSD, Mental Health Advocates: 

Impact on Education provided funding to hire four additional Mental Health Advocates to be deployed year-round in BVSD’s schools most impacted by the Marshall Fire. 

“We are seeing a significant increase when it comes to the social-emotional support our students need at this critical moment. Those impacted by the fire are working to process everything that happened. It was a deeply traumatic experience and it will take some time for these students to cope with the tremendous amount of loss and PTSD that everyone impacted by the fires are struggling through.”

Tammy Lawrence, Student Support Services Director

The additional support of four new Mental Health Advocates will ensure all of the schools impacted by the Marshall Fire have the intensive layer of mental health support needed, and expand BVSD’s capacity to respond to mental health referrals. 

The intensity of mental health concerns and the time required to provide support and intervention varies dramatically from case to case, but BVSD’s leadership is confident that adding these clinicians to the School District team was the most critical immediate step.

Funding to support mental health has come from our generous community partners

YOU CAN HELP …

Impact on Education is a nonprofit organization, and we depend on our community to help us put our mission into action. We are still actively raising funds to support the mental health needs of Boulder Valley students and staff. You can help by making a gift to support this work.

GIVE TODAY

How we’re funding opportunity for students across BVSD

One of the key ways we provide opportunity to high needs students in the Boulder Valley School District (BVSD) is through our Academic Opportunity Fund. Our fourth and final funding round for the 2021-22 school year recently closed and we’re proud to share that we’re investing another $44,000 to meet the needs of BVSD students. This brings our total Academic Opportunity Fund investment to over $150,000 for the 2021-22 school year.

In Round Four, community volunteers helped evaluate 17 anonymized application requests and provide feedback on funding decisions. That data was then reviewed by Impact on Education (IOE) staff and final decisions were made.

A variety of needs

From competition fees to tutoring programs, our Academic Opportunity Fund supported a variety of student and school needs including funding to:

Other ways we’re investing in student success 

The success of BVSD students sometimes requires more than our schools and teachers are able to provide during the day, and this is where we step in. With the help of our community, we can support students and families by providing equitable access to critical academic opportunities.

This summer, we’ll be working to help students in our Career Readiness Academy line up summer employment, preparing for an expanded early learning program for rising kindergarteners this summer, and kick off our annual Crayons to Calculators school supply distribution. Learn more about how we support Student Success.

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Impact on Education
721 Front Street, Suite A
Louisville, CO 80027

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