With students back in school, families are grappling with all the academic and practical challenges of hybrid, remote, and in-person learning. At the same time, school and community officials are also charged with ensuring that children and teens won’t be overwhelmed by their new circumstances, whether that is the isolation, fear, or even just the regular stress of a new school year.

A widely cited Centers for Disease Control & Prevention study shows that stress is a serious issue, with one in four young adults reporting that they considered suicide, and that experiences of anxiety and depression had more than tripled in the youth population this year.

At the beginning of the summer, Madison schools convened a mental health task force, charged with addressing some of the struggles students experienced in the spring following the initial shutdown. The task force is made up of staff from all levels and backgrounds across the district.

Assistant Superintendent of Schools Gail Dahling-Hench said the task force has created and modified many policies, as well as helping to determine how the new hybrid plan functions, with the intent of reaching out to students and better addressing mental health concerns.

That starts with teachers who are intended to be the first point of contact for students on mental health issues, according to Dahling-Hench.

“All of our teachers universally are very aware that our kids have been away for five months, and that a lot happens in five months,” she said. “So they’re very attuned to looking, listening.”

Additionally, elementary schools now have their own guidance counselors, and multiple surveys throughout will ask students to bring up topics of mental health, Dahling-Hench said. Those guidance counselors also will teach social-emotional lessons in classrooms, she said.

Madison Youth & Family Services (MYFS) Director Scott Cochran, who has also worked closely on the topic with the schools, told The Source that he has seen both his staff and school officials placing a greater emphasis on mental health this year, focusing mostly on individualized interventions.

“They’re doing a great job of putting together all the plans and the supports, but there is a sense of ‘How long will we be able to maintain this new setup? How long will this new normal be the new normal?’” Cochran said. “There’s sort of a natural anxiety around adjusting to the new school plan, and then sort of knowing that it could change again.”

With uncertainty around what school will look like month to month or even week to week, Cochran said the goal is to make sure that students have a voice in identifying barriers to their mental health, as well as having clinical and other supports ready for each student or family.

“In the most simple terms, parents can reach directly out to the school that their child is in, or they can call us,” Cochran said. “And that’s one thing that I would like to get across to the community—we want parents and our youth to know that there are different ways to access help and support.”

But with many students separated into cohorts and restricted in their movements at school, as well as spending three days a week at home for remote learning, identifying kids who are struggling and guiding them to the proper channels will almost certainly be a greater challenge than in previous years.

Dahling-Hench again emphasized the power and importance of teachers for overcoming this. She said during the first couple days of school, she spoke to a 1st-grade teacher who was having trouble reading the facial expression of a student, and that teacher planned to call home just to get an idea from the parents what a specific expression meant, and how to better read the student.

“So that’s a really prime example of early on how our teachers are paying attention and how they’re doing in our classrooms,” Dahling-Hench said.

The mental health task force presented to teachers during a professional development session, based on state and federal guidance on social-emotional learning, according to Dahling-Hench, and teachers were also trained on issues of youth suicide and mental health awareness this year.

The reopening plan that Madison released months ago includes a sort of flow-chart for these mental health issues and interventions, identifying when and how counselors will be involved and offering new opportunities or supports including social groups or behavior plans.

The schools will also teach several age-appropriate lessons to all students during the first two weeks of the reopening, focusing on mental health and social-emotional wellness. A series of mini-webinars spread over the first few months are intended to help guide parents through these issues, Cochran said.

Other adjustments are still in process, according to Dahling-Hench. She said she had just received an email on Sept. 4 from the state on attendance issues during the pandemic, which could potentially see modifications based on students’ struggles with mental health during the pandemic.

Jake Daignault, a Daniel Hand High School (DHHS) student who also serves on MYFS advisory board, expressed frustration with last spring’s remote learning plan and decried the lack of student input in the school’s plan at a Board of Education meeting last month.

Later telling The Source that he had received some assurances and encouraging information in meetings with DHHS Principal TJ Salutari and Interim Superintendent of Schools JeanAnn Paddyfote, Daignault still expressed concerns that students would struggle this year.

“I suggested having guidance check-ins—just having guidance counselors reach out, talk to kids, [and] almost be the bridge between teachers and students in case there’s a disconnect. Because it’s tough with the online [classes],” Daignault said last month. “They’re way more able to reach out to a teacher if a teacher, say, has a meeting.”

Daignault also said he requested regular check-ins or surveys administered directly by teachers that would allow students to provide a weekly overview of their struggles or successes, a suggestion that he said did not receive either a yes or a no from Paddyfote and Salutari.

Cochran said that while he couldn’t really speak to the viability for a program like that, he thought teachers were by and large “very responsive” to student concerns and said that student voices needed to be part of the conversation.

“We work very hard to connect directly with kids and let them tell us what’s going on with them, and try to engage kids as well as parents around whatever’s going on,” he said.

Working to end stigmas around mental health would be a big part of that, Cochran said, making sure students were not too embarrassed to talk to adults or even each other about things like anxiety or depression.

Dahling-Hench said that the surveys put out by the district would likely be targeted at a specific issue or overarching questions rather than as a regular check-in, and would likely include other questions besides those just focused on mental health.

Because everything is still in flux, Dahling-Hench said she could not commit to a specific number of surveys, many of which would likely go to parents and teachers as well, but said a minimum of three was likely, with the first administered potentially by the end of the month.

Some of those struggles and experiences—the “natural anxiety” around the pandemic—is a “healthy response” to the kind of upheaval currently going on, and parents shouldn’t try to explain away or suppress these feelings in their children, according to Cochran. He encouraged parents to be aware that changes in their children’s behaviors is to be expected, while still being prepared to seek more professional help if they escalate or become more worrying.

“There is going to be a sort of natural level of anxiety...We’re living in fairly uncertain times,” Cochran said. “Major changes in their behavior, you’d maybe want to encourage a parent or a young person to reach out to a mental health professional, it would be...something that they’re noticing and that they’re worried about and they want to be able to talk it out with a professional. It’s a very healthy action to take on the part of a parent.”

MYFS has licensed clinicians available to speak with both parents and students, and can be reached confidentially at 203-245-5645. Cochran also encouraged parents to follow MYFS on Facebook, where they regularly post new resources or programs.

Parent webinars, along with other resources compiled by the school district can be found at www.madison.k12.ct.us/reopening/parent-mini-webinar-series.