Funding for first year available!
Miss Kendra Programs is a trauma-informed, social and emotional learning (SEL) program that equips schools to proactively address the social and emotional needs of their students as they return to school while continuing to grapple with the ongoing threat of COVID-19, the lasting impacts of extended school closures and stay-at-home orders, and the upending of many other aspects of their lives.
Miss Kendra Programs offer an established, cost-effective, and sustainable intervention to help meet the emotional needs of children as they return to school by giving them a safe space to share their stressors and worries and by equipping schools to create whole-school environments that welcome open conversation about stressful experiences.
In more than 40 schools in 10 states, Miss Kendra Programs has consistently reduced disruptive behaviors, increased teacher efficacy, and improved school climate, regardless of race or socioeconomic status, in rural and urban communities. Best of all, because the program trains teachers and school support staff to deliver the program, Miss Kendra Programs produces lasting improvements in a school’s ability to support children’s social and emotional health at a cost that schools can sustain.
Miss Kendra Programs is now expanding in elementary schools across Connecticut to respond to the widespread need for effective SEL programs that reach every student in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis. SEL programs that rely on remedial approaches involving intensive interventions with the most distressed and symptomatic students can cost upwards of $5,000 per student per year. Miss Kendra Programs offers an affordable, sustainable alternative, with an annual, per-student cost of roughly $50 during the first year of the program and approximately $10 in Year 2 and beyond.
The CSDE encourages districts to use federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER II) funding for social and emotional supports to to address the “social-emotional well-being of the whole student,” which CSDE identifies as a state-level ESSER priority. Districts can invest a fraction of this funding to bring Miss Kendra Programs to their schools this year, and can typically sustain the program with district and/or community resources.
To learn more about Miss Kendra Programs Connecticut Expansion initiative and becoming a Miss Kendra school, click here.
Miss Kendra Programs is looking for elementary schools that have experience delivering trauma-informed care, that can make a whole-school commitment to the program’s guiding principles of trauma-sensitivity, non-punitive discipline, and a whole-child approach, and that are prepared to sustain the program.
If your school is ready to move beyond being trauma-informed and ready to address trauma proactively, become a Miss Kendra school today!
