Children smiling near a pool during a field trip

Combining Passion with Competence

We exist to support the development of culturally responsive, trauma-informed community schools that can deliver a continuum of evidence-based and restorative practices organized using multi-tiered systems of support.

Our "Why"

The students are at the core of everything we do.

Wayne County Community Schools exists to support the development of culturally responsive, trauma-informed Community Schools. Supported schools will have the capacity to deliver a continuum of evidence-based and restorative practices organized to meet the needs of all students. Resources are organized with a Multi-Tiered System of Supports, which is a public health model adapted for educational settings. This model encourages the promotion of health, prevention of harm, and early intervention to prevent crisis.

Wayne County Community Schools will provide technical assistance and training to schools by creating clarity through on-the-spot support, accessible toolkits, and shared communities of practice. In order to provide initial energy for a project or to support strained systems, we can intercede and organize direct service.

We intend to develop a county-by-county approach to focus national, state, regional, and local resources into place-based and person-centered programs and supports.

We encourage the careful use of qualitative and quantitative data, systematic teaming, and consistent practices that fit each place while maintaining a flexible framework of tools that typically work and allow for variations to meet what young people and families need in each setting.

Data

We believe the decisions for our youth should start with data. Subjectivity can leave our youth to fall through the cracks. Our systems and practices are built and constantly fine-tuned based on the data we collect in our region. Data can be more than numbers. Taking time to organize our experiences into meaningful stories provides qualitative data that can orient decision making.

53%

african-american children

Live in poverty compared to the state rate which is 35%. 69% of our African American young people arrive to school from single-parent homes.

62.1%

non-white students

(compared to 49.5% of all students) reported being depressed. Minority students were also far more likely (30.5% vs. 20.6%) to report intentionally injuring themselves and to have made a plan to commit suicide (14.2% vs. 11.5%)

41.6%

of african-americans

are unemployed compared to a 14.6% rate for all of New York State.

Systems Thinking

Over the last ten years across our region, we’ve been implementing evidence-based frameworks into our schools to improve effectiveness and efficiency to better reach our youth.

ARCH

The Attachment, Self-Regulation, Competency, and Health Framework is a flexible, components-based intervention developed for children and adolescents who have experienced complex trauma, along with their caregiving systems. ARC’s foundation is built upon four key areas of study: normative childhood development, traumatic stress, attachment, and risk and resilience.

MTSS

MTSS (Multi-Tiered Systems of Support) provides a framework for organizing services that are imported from the community. An MTSS framework will place services within a school system in an accessible fashion, help to manage referral flow, provide a mechanism for screening students and monitoring data from those behavioral screens as well as attendance, behavior, and coursework data that can provide an early warning to staff that a student may have a life issue developing.

Culturally Responsive

When we ignore tough issues like race, we fail our children and our families. Bland generalizations of “I love all my children” or “everyone is the same to me” are platitudes that fail young people facing real barriers to equitable access.

Our Practices

We have been working to implement a continuum of interventions with fidelity across all of our community schools. Here are some of our evidence-based practices:

Life Skills

A tier one practice — Life Skills is a course given to all teachers, counselors and other program officers teaching them how to implement the state-of-the-art prevention education activities & teaching strategies

Check-In/ Check-Out

Check-in/Check-out is one of very first lines of defense in tier two for children who need the support to help them work through their day.

Wrap/Renew

Wrap/Renew is a similar practice to Check-in/Check-out but for older aged transitioned youth.