Three to five children enter Auburn’s schools every morning having suffered or witnessed some sort of trauma the night before, including neglect, abandonment, beatings, seeing relatives pass away, even witnessing the murders of family members.
Those kids need to be handled with care.
But there is a problem. Too often district staff perform the crucial task of greeting the kids with little to no training in what to look for.
“Our staff really needs some help,” said Rhonda Larson, assistant superintendent for family engagement and student success in the Auburn School District.
That help arrives this summer with the launching of the first Handle With Care Intervention Academy on Aug. 15 and 16th at Auburn High School. There, professionals in the field will teach staff what they need to know, what to look for in students and how to keep themselves and the kids safe
The program will cost about $17,000 to put on in Auburn.
But where will the money come from?
Enter Auburn’s Kiwanis Club of the Valley. At the regular meeting of the Auburn School District Board of Directors on Monday, club member John Partridge and its current President, Kelley Jensen, presented the district a check for precisely that amount.
As a Kiwanian, Partridge explains, he agreed to raise $7,000 from corporate sponsors if the club could raise $10,000. It agreed. His part of the fundraising drive, The Purple Sock Fitness Challenge, ended on March 31, said Partridge who chaired the effort.
Partridge said his wife, Shirley, a kindergarten teacher, once had a student in class who had watched his father cut his mother’s throat the night before.
“How great of an attention span do you think that kid’s going to have?” Partridge asked.
Here’s how this all came together.
A year or so ago, the as-yet unexplored implications of having an out sized number of kids involved in so many of the domestic violence incidents called in to the Auburn Police Department prompted officers to take a close look at the problem and to see what it could do.
Seeing the hard numbers on paper was sobering: 45 percent of the kids enrolled in the Auburn School District who are involved in 911 calls were up against some sort of domestic violence in their homes.
Auburn Police Officer Jessica Smith then approached the Auburn School District about the problem, and from the emergent collaboration came the program called Handle With Care.
“We realized it was a bigger issue than what we were prepared for,” said Smith.
This is how Handle with Care works. First, Smith tracks any and all calls involving children, from car accidents to domestic violence incidents to assaults, and then passes the information to the school district — name only. From there, the district contacts school principals about any children under their wing who may need attention.
And from August 2022 on, staff will have the training to know just what to look for.
“It’s an exciting time to be able to help these children out further, not only in their home life, but in their school life, too,” said Officer Smith.
