NW BOCES provides needed services

NW BOCES' Carolyn Campbell Conner gave a presentation at the March 12 Historical Society meeting to celebrate their 51st anniversary and to explain to the public about the NW BOCES organization and its history.

Conner said, "We currently serve youth with emotional disabilities placed by either school districts or the Department of Family Services with 12 students at this time."

Regarding serving the students, Conner said, "It's wonderful. Yet challenging, as our students have not been able to and can no longer be in a local school system. They've had issues at home and placed with us as for children in need of services. We do a specialized program to help them, their family, and the districts to get them back in their home community."

Connor added it's, "Challenging in that the severity of the students has increased over the years and takes a lot of one-on-one attention, a lot of therapy, building trust and relationships with the students and their families. But the outcomes are wonderful when a student goes back to the district to have success."

When it comes to the increase in severity, Connor said there is no direct data on that but commented, "Families are struggling. The world is changing. And certainly, since the COVID pandemic, kids have a lot of emotional and mental health needs."

As the students go through their program, Connor said it used to take less than a year to graduate, but with the severity the students have experienced, it takes longer, some students up to two years.

Connor said, "We have certain criteria of a student via a level system number one through four. And so one is entry-level four is they're getting ready to transition and graduate from the program. It's all behavioral-based and they're ready any time of the year. And we do that transition back to the district and prepare them to be successful in the home and the school district."

When it comes to some success stories of their students Connor said, "One great thing we have as an outcome, students that are allowed to stay in the program and actually complete the program, we have a rate of 81% of those students who have never have reentered a residential facility or correctional facility in the three years after they exit."

NW BOCES is funded using a fee-for-service model. The only other funding they receive is some of their member districts give mill levy funds in order to continue operating. They don't get building and maintenance funds from the state.

Regarding some of her presentation, Connor said, "I'm going to talk about the member districts, going to talk about board members, years of service of our staff, and a little bit about an entry of a student and what that looks like and the programming as well as showing pictures of our kids. Our kids are not physically disabled like the previous program that we had, but in mental health things. So they're out about in our community and we're proud of them when they go out in the community."