WARWICK — With a $100,000 state grant, Warwick Community School will continue to lay down the foundation for its comprehensive behavioral and mental health services program.

Franklin County’s newest school district, which formed in 2023 when Warwick Community School reopened its doors, will use the Healey-Driscoll administration’s grant funds to design and implement a framework of trainings and services to address the school’s approximately 30 students’ behavioral and mental health needs.

Faye Brady, Warwick Community School’s special education administrator and the grant’s author, said the young district is seeking to create a robust foundation for its mental health services, which will help students emotionally, both in and outside the classroom.

“Schools are really focused on a lot of things — academics being a primary one — and I think we know with our young people, their social-emotional well-being and mental health is connected to how well they do academically,” Brady said. “Our idea was to create this system and this framework and to design it in such a way that it was meeting our current needs, but was also developed for sustainability.”

Warwick was the only district in Franklin County to receive funding from the $5.4 million pool of grants and was one of 60 school districts tapping into it. As part of the grant, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education will be providing professional development for school district staff.

“The Healey-Driscoll administration is focused on healing, stabilizing and transforming our education system that is still recovering from the lasting impacts of the pandemic,” Education Secretary Patrick Tutwiler said in a statement. “These grants are providing our schools, from North Adams to Dennis, with the funding they need to foster environments that support healthy social and emotional development in their classrooms and beyond.”

A key part of this framework is professional development for staff focusing on trauma-informed and linguistically responsive practices. Trauma-informed practices, Brady explained, will help staff understand the challenges students have gone through and allow teachers to cultivate a safe learning space for students, while linguistically responsive training will help teachers bring students’ cultural backgrounds into the classroom.

“What we’re working with on our staff is understanding the … connection with people who are struggling with something that has happened in the past,” Brady said, adding that the linguistic training will help staff to “look at and understand where our students and families come to us, and developing instructional and responsive practices that allow us to work with families in a way that is meaningful and relevant to them.”

Brady said the district, like every other school district in the region and state, is still seeing lingering effects from the pandemic. Brady added that creating programs like the one at Warwick Community School can help address those challenges.

“I think the pandemic has far-reaching implications on children and families. … When you have that type of trauma experience, it doesn’t go away just because COVID is less of an issue now,” Brady said. “Trauma, it has a sustaining impact on people. … When you trigger anxiety and stress, even when that causation maybe has resolved, our bodies and our minds hold onto that still.”

Finally, the grant will help the school build out a data dashboard for staff that will include things like grades, testing results, attendance and other information that can be analyzed. Brady added that the dashboard will also have a parent-facing component, which she said will provide an opportunity for families to better connect with the school and see how their student is doing.

“This grant is to continue to promote community and family engagement as well, because our students might come to school without their families. Their families are a big part of that success,” Brady said. “We’re really excited about it and I have to say, it’s wonderful to be part of a school where 100% of the personnel are on board with this.”

Chris Larabee can be reached at clarabee@recorder.com.