T-L Photos/GAGE VOTA St. Clairsville-Richland City School District student’s parent Kayla Kidd explains that the school has endured the loss of four students in four years to suicide and believes the district needs to provide its students more mental health resources.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — After the recent suicide of a St. Clairsville-Richland City School District student, parents showed up in droves to Wednesday morning’s school board meeting to discuss ways to keep a tragedy like that from happening again.

The meeting, held at 7 a.m. instead of the usual 5 p.m. to accommodate a board member’s schedule, was standing-room only, as the board and parents had a candid conversation about the school can ensure another student doesn’t feel the need to commit suicide.

Parent Kayla Kidd addressed the board by first expressing that she wants the board to understand that she isn’t personally attacking them while commending its members’ dedication to the students.

“Our school community has endured the unimaginable loss of four students in four years to suicide,” Kidd said. “Each of those lives matter deeply. Each loss rippled through our classrooms, hallways and homes, reminding us that the need for mental health support in our schools is here and it’s urgent every day our youth is struggling.”

She added that students may not always be struggling in ways that are obvious or a level that demands emergency intervention such as school based therapy, but struggling nonetheless.

Kidd said that she found out about the latest suicide through social media and was unhappy that the district didn’t lead the conversation of informing parents.

“Why are parents finding out about deaths of students through social media outlets and not from the school directly?” Kidd asked. “It got me thinking, what are other schools doing that we are not to prevent suicide? So I called around to other districts in the county and spoke to several schools. I called Union Local School District and spoke with someone from student services. They informed me that they have a prevention specialist in the elementary, middle and high school buildings all five days of the week. This is an addition to two school-based therapists and guidance counselors.”

She added that she also called Bridgeport School District and was informed that it also has prevention specialists working in the elementary, middle and high school as well as school-based therapists and guidance counselors.

“These districts have had zero suicides in five years. So my question today is, why? With a district our size, what are we not offering the support that other schools in the county have?” Kidd said. “It cannot be denied that there is a problem, and we would like to know what is being done to address the crisis. We know teachers and staff care deeply about our kids, but they are not mental health professionals.”

Once becoming aware of the student’s death, Kidd created an online petition to raise awareness of the crisis and ensure that the school has professionals dedicated to prevention work.

“You can’t just respond to the pain, you have to build hope and say to the students, you are seen, you matter, and help is here before it’s too late,” Kidd said. “After the losses we’ve experienced, doing anything less would be unthinkable.”

In only four days since Kidd created it, the petition received 976 signatures from community members.

Parent Jason Bradley then suggested that the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention has an outreach programs for students as well as an outreach program for teacher education that the board should look into.

“There might be partnerships you can look into and bring them into the school system,” Bradley said. “There’s an Ohio chapter as well, so there are local resources through them. The other thing I want to say is I know that through experience, bullying is a big problem. We hear this from our kids all the time.”

He added that his child drums to his own beat so he doesn’t worry about him being suicidal because of bullying, but noted that bullying is a massive problem in the school.

St. Clairsville High School principal Justin Sleutz said that the school does have a zero-tolerance policy for bullying and investigates all complaints it receives.

“I’m certainly not trying to just paint a rosy picture. I know why we’re here, and we want to provide as many services as we can,” Sleutz said.

Assistant superintendent Christina Laudermilt added that the school does provide services to our students through the East Central Ohio ESC Center as well as have a person on staff that provides prevention programming starting in grade one and going all the way up to grade 12. She added that the school also has a contract with Cedar Ridge Behavioral Health Solutions

For school based therapy.

Geena Jarvie is the behavioral health and wellness coordinator for the school through ESC and spoke to the attendees about tier one, two, and three programs.

She said that tier one is universal mental health support. All students are required to receive tier one, and it is to promote all overall wellness and prevent problems before they start. Tier two is targeted mental health support. It’s geared towards students that show early signs of struggle or mild to moderate needs, and provides early, short term assistance before issues escalate. Tier three is intensive mental health support. This tier is implemented when a student with significant, ongoing crisis-level mental health needs intensive and often long term care.

“So what we do at our school for kids to get referred is through our tier one programming they are to fill out exit slips through the programs that we do, they mark whether they would like to talk to somebody or whether they would not like to talk to somebody. So that is one way to get a referral to tier two,” Jarvie said. “Other ways that they can get referred is through a Google form. Staff and students both have access to this. We go over the steps of how to make a referral at the beginning of the year, and everyone is informed on how to do so. And for tier three you just refer on.”

She added that the school currently doesn’t have a tier two program but goes through Cedar Ridge after a referral from her.

Jarvie receives all of the referrals, and then gets those students connected and coordinates their services through Cedar Ridge.

“Respectfully, what we have now isn’t working,” Kidd replied to Jarvie.

She added that the school is lacking the bridge connecting tier one and tier two.

Kidd then suggested to the board that she would like to have a special meeting with the board, parents, and mental health professionals to figure out a solution.

“Kayla [Kidd], I’d be happy to sit down with you and bring some people in and brainstorm to see what we can do, absolutely,” Superintendent Walter Skaggs said. “I promise you, when I got that phone call Thursday, there’s just no words. And I guarantee everybody at this table feels the same way, as well as our administration and district.”

Board president Michael Jacob added that any parent can reach out to him any time if they have any questions or concerns. He said that the board aggressively wants to find a solution and plans to act fast.