LAURINBURG — At the start of the school year, Sycamore Lane began a day treatment program and, on Monday, the Board of Education got an update on how the program is going.
Director of School Support Services Jamie Synan explained that the school partners with Advantage Behavioral Services to help students not only meet their academic needs but also their mental health needs.
“We currently have seven students that are receiving day treatment and the cap we set at the beginning was eight as we first start out,” Synan said. “As students begin transitioning out we probably pull additional students who qualify … the idea with the day treatment is we don’t want them in day treatment all year long, we don’t want them in there for multiple years. We want them to begin to transition into the regular classroom so they can be with their peers.”
The students have a therapist who visits three days per week and in the classroom have two staffers from Advantage Behavioral, along with a teachers assistant and a teacher who is duel certified in general and exceptional children.
“Sometimes you’ll go in and you’ll see two students playing a game and you’ll say, ‘oh, they’re just playing a game, they’re not really doing anything,’ but what we’re working on them with is if there’s a conflict in that game,” Synan said. “It really helps with those daily living skills.”
Everything done in the regular classroom are also done in the day program, such as Letterland to make sure the students academics are still being met. The seven students in the program are from first to fifth grades, and four of the student have begun to transition out into the classrooms.
“One has fully transitioned for academics and just comes back for some of the mental health and concealing services,” Synan said. “The other three have transitioned into specials and also some academic areas. They start out in specials and lets say math is my favorite suject I’m going to transition into math and see how I do in math with some support then transition into some of the other ones.”
Synan said a lot of great things are happening in the program for some of the neediest students in the district. She added that every student in day treatment has had some issues being in school for a full day for a full year.
“One of the biggest celebrations that we have from 2017 to 2019 we have one student, who is in day treatment now, that since 2017 was on home-bound or partial days,” Synan said. “Could not come to school for a full day and was placed on home-bound for the behavior and some of the things going on. This year he has been full day everyday and is making amazing progress. He is like the poster child for day treatment.”
Reach Katelin Gandee at 910-506-3171 or at [email protected]