OHS students present to board about mental health
Dec. 14—OSKALOOSA — Two Oskaloosa High School student council members presented a report to the Board of Education about a recent summit on mental health that four OHS students attended last month.
Lawson Morris and Reese Milburn-Van Wyk led the presentation at the board's regular meeting Tuesday evening. They shared their experiences attending the inaugural Illuminate: Student Summit on Wellness, held in Crystal City, Virginia, from Nov. 10-13. The summit focused on ways to improve mental health in high school across the nation.
Morris and Milburn-Van Wyk, joined by fellow OHS students Ava Ridenour and Elliott Nelson, represented Oskaloosa at the summit. OHS teachers Carrie Bihn and Kim Gile attended as well.
The opportunity arose after Morris was accepted to a prestigious National Honor Society leadership program.
"How we initially got connected to this summit was, I applied last year and was accepted as one of eight facilitators nationwide for the NHS [National Honor Society] Student Leadership Network on Mental Health," Morris said. "We connect over Zoom with any NHS member who wishes to register, and we just provide a safe space for them to talk about their mental health."
According to Morris, the NHS parent organization, the National Association for Secondary School Principals, held the summit and covered all of the expenses to fly each facilitator, with the addition of two advisors, to Virginia. The facilitators were encouraged to bring along a student team, which is how four OHS students found themselves spending three days networking with students and administrators from across the country about the problem of mental health in the nation's schools.
The students spent their time at the summit identifying main concerns about mental health in schools and brainstorming about ways to improve them. The OHS group identified "disrespect and discipline" as their main concern.
"What we decided was that during the teachers' professional development meetings bi-weekly, we will have a student-run discussion for 15 or fewer minutes where the students provide questions and sit with the teachers to discuss certain disciplinary issues and situations that they think the teachers ought to approach differently, from a student's perspective," Morris said.
Both Morris and Milburn-Van Wyk said the OHS students benefited from discussing their problems and ideas with delegates from other schools.
"We definitely learned a lot about networking, a lot from other schools," Milburn-Van Wyk said. "Hearing what other schools had to say ... We felt very nervous putting disrespect and discipline out there, because that's not something you really want people to know that's your biggest issue in your high school. But there were 19 schools there, and most of the schools struggled a lot with that, so it was kind of eye-opening and it was very rewarding, almost, to get to talk to other schools about what they wanted to do and about their plan moving forward."
The group will continue to stay in touch with the people they met at the summit as they move forward with implementing their plan.
In other news, Oskaloosa Community Schools District Business Manager and Board Secretary Chad Vink presented the board's statement of depository balances Tuesday night. The total depository balance as of June 30, 2022 is $19,270,070.49. This balance only represents bank balances and does not include investment accounts.
Vink also presented the Fiscal Year 2022 Treasury Report, which resulted from filing the Certified Annual Report.
Ending balances are as follows:
— General Fund: $5,340,547.19
— Student Activity Fund: $494,996.95
— Management Levy Fund: $1,402,937.26
— Support Trust Fund: $1,866.75
— SAVE Statewide Sales and Services Tax Fund: $5,625,659.39
— Physical Plant and Equipment Levy Fund: $695,347.88
— Debt Service Fund: $0.00
— Enterprise Funds: $354,022.84
According to the meeting's agenda, a more detailed audit report will be issued later and will contain more comprehensive information.
Channing Rucks can be reached at crucks@oskyherald.com.
