Ohio

The Greene County Educational Service Center (ESC) has a large minority population in their pre-schools and elementary schools with over 20 different languages and cultures represented.  Most students need services through the ESL (English language learner) and LEP (limited English proficiency) programs. ESC desired to effectively address diverse student needs while also engaging students and their families in a positive and respectful manner. 

The Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) and the PAX Good Behavior Game are evidence-based programs (EBPs) that appear on the National Registry of Evidence-Based Programs and Practices (NREPP). These classroom-based universal preventive intervention provides teachers’ strategies to grow nurturing classroom environments, foster social-emotional health, improve students’ attention and focus to academic tasks, provides trauma-informed prevention strategies to use as classroom management practices.

The Ohio Healthy Youth Environments Survey (OHYES!) is a free, voluntary, web-based survey to collect information that schools, communities leaders, and parents can use to identify important areas of need, access resources to reduce risk behaviors, create healthy and safe communities, schools. and family environments, and to track improvements in health and safety over time. OHYES! is a statewide survey of Ohio school students in 7th and 11th grades.

The State and community leaders partnered to develop the Healthy Schools and Communities Resource Team. The purpose of the team is to promote integration and alignment of the work among Ohio’s federal-funding initiatives, including Safe Schools/Healthy Students (SS/HS), Project AWARE, and School Climate Transformation Grants.

Greene County Educational Service Center (ESC) developed the ECMHC program to promote young children’s social and emotional development, to address challenging behaviors, and to assist parents/caregivers of young children in the region who have experienced high levels of trauma or toxic stress. The caregivers in early learning programs were not adequately trained on how to support the social-emotional development of children. In Greene County, 44 out of 57 child care centers were not yet participating in the Ohio’s quality rating and improvement system.

Ohio is one of seven states awarded a Safe Schools/Healthy Students (SS/HS) grant in 2013 from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) of the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services.