July 1st, 2024
How Judson Independent School District Used Various Funding Streams to Offer Digital Curricula and Safety Monitoring Products
Challenge
Approach
Results
About Judson Independent School District (ISD)
Judson ISD is a public school district encompassing seven incorporated cities over more than 55 square miles that run north/south along the east side of San Antonio, Texas. Located between two military bases, Judson ISD serves more than 4,000 military-connected students. Because 70% of students are economically disadvantaged, the district qualifies for Title I funding.
Judson ISD prioritizes student well-being and safety and strives to meet each student’s social, emotional, and academic needs. Its comprehensive district plan includes a Multi-Tiered System of Support that offers services for all students at the level they need, implemented by the Student & Family Support Services Department. The district uses a positive character traits and life skills framework as a foundation to develop core competencies in all its students.
The district utilizes its school counselors and social workers for students who need additional support. Judson ISD also partners with a local collaborative of mental health providers who, with consent from parents and caregivers, offer in-person individual and group counseling and wraparound support at no cost to the students, their families, or district staff.
Judson ISD’s Challenge: Fund New Digital Resources on a Limited Budget
After the pandemic, Judson ISD saw an increased demand for student well-being and safety supports. In response, the district wanted to provide students character education lessons, teaching skills such as self-awareness, self-management, and decision-making. It also needed to improve its student-safety system to meet, detect, and respond to serious mental health concerns. Yet, the district had a limited budget.
Student Challenges: Expanding Access to Character-Building Skills and Increasing Student Safety
Develop Life and Character-Building Skills
Promote Social and School Connectedness
Equip Staff and Students to Recognize and Respond to Distress
Ensure Student Access to Effective Mental Health Treatment
Judson ISD also recognized an increase in mental health challenges among students and identified the need for supplementary measures to ensure that students are not silently struggling
Existing Programming
The district also already had an in-house safety system that monitored the content of student text or searches while using district computers or Wi-Fi. Like the character-building curriculum, this system was cumbersome and time intensive. When concerning text or searches were detected, such as mention of self-harm, district staff were alerted so they could notify counselors to help students. However, the process relied on one employee manually pulling reports and emailing appropriate district staff with the concerns. This quickly became a burdensome job with significant delays and required working after school hours.
Opportunities for Change
The Student & Family Support Services Department recognized that more advanced digital tools could help them improve current systems to improve quality and increase administrative efficiency. The district also needed to find a more effective, automated monitoring product to replace its in-house system that would meet new Texas mandates to report safety concerns about bullying or harassment.
Barriers to Change
Strategic Priority: Identifying a Viable Funding Strategy
Judson ISD already utilized a wide array of funding to strengthen its broader mental health and well-being services. In addition to the partnership that allowed students to access free mental health services, the district also used philanthropic funding to pay for a care navigator who ensured students, families, and district staff received these services once referred.
The Student & Family Support Service Department planned to braid local, state, and federal sources to purchase and cover implementation costs of new digital supports for student well-being.
Objective 1:
Collaborate across departments
Why:
What it Took:
- Fostered staff buy-in and unified departments by demonstrating the value of the digital products for student well-being and their potential for easing staff burden
- Developed a sense of shared responsibility for implementing and financing new digital products
- Solicited other departments’ input to build a shared understanding of student well-being needs, how departments could support one another, and what funding gaps and flexibility existed
For instance, the Technology Department partnered with the Student & Family Support Services Department to research and implement a new digital product, Gaggle, as a replacement to their time-intensive in-house safety monitoring program. The district quickly saw a return on its investment by gaining a highly effective automated system in place of its manual one. After implementation, the Student & Family Support Services Department continued to collaborate closely with the Technology Department to maintain Gaggle. Judson ISD found that nurturing inter-district departmental relationships was essential for ensuring sustainability.
Objective 2:
Braid funding streams together
Why:
What it Took:
- The Student & Family Support Services Department looked beyond its budget to identify sustainable funding since ESSER funds were ending
- Reallocated the character-building curriculum costs from ESSER funds to its Instructional Materials Allotment (IMA) budget, a more sustainable state funding stream
- Utilized a federal grant to purchase and begin to implement STOPit, an effective bullying-prevention product that included anonymous reporting and access to crisis counselors
- Leveraged the Technology Department’s budget, a more sustainable funding stream, to support ongoing operating costs for STOPit. The digital nature of STOPit and the Technology Department’s involvement with implementation and maintenance made it a good fit.
Objective 3:
Think big, but start small
Why:
What it Took:
- Piloted the program in a handful of schools the first year to test whether Class Catalyst would be a good fit for the district
- Identified a sustainable funding source: State Compensatory Education funds. These funds are used for programs that support students struggling academically or at risk of dropping out of school
- Worked with school counselors to implement the program districtwide
Objective 4:
Utilize Free Solutions
Why:
What it Took:
- Recognized he need for supplemental substance use prevention education because of the rising number of youths caught with vaping paraphernalia at school
- Researched free educational sources available online
- Determined that EVERFI, while not sufficient to be the only tool for substance use prevention, provided an important supplemental resource for the students free of charge and selected it for use
District and Student Outcomes
Key takeaways and learnings
Insight #1
Collaborate across district departments
Insight #2
Continually monitor and evaluate products and funding each year
very process for implementing effective new products must include a continuous monitoring and evaluation plan. This includes soliciting input from district department stakeholders at several points during implementation. Judson ISD recognized that it is essential to create a multi-department district team that:
- Provides continuous feedback
- Periodically evaluates product usage
- Ensures that the funding streams allocated for these programs are sustainable over the long term
Plans for Sustaining and Expanding the Program
Judson ISD used a braided funding strategy to implement its new digital products and will continue to utilize this strategy moving forward. The district's first yearly assessment team identified two ways to improve the use of its digital products:
- The district will incorporate new fentanyl awareness lessons into its seven Mindsets curriculum at no extra cost by removing underutilized and unnecessary lessons and reallocating resources to better meet student needs.
- The district plans to further investigate how teachers use technologies in supporting character development and substance use prevention in their classrooms to explore ways to increase or reallocate funding for each product.
