A year ago I had the good fortune to attend a conference of school board members in Nashville, and one of the presentations I watched was on the subject of confidential student surveys. The previous year, in New Orleans, I had seen a similar presentation on student surveys.
The Meriden Public Schools in Connecticut were battling an epidemic of bullying in schools and they were also attempting to stem the tide of student depression among the local population in the effort to prevent suicides. These schools did this by initiating compulsory student surveys, confidential but non-anonymous, for all students in grades 3-11. The surveys were developed to be age appropriate for each grade level, and many of the questions were innocuous, while some of the questions were designed to be "trigger" questions that would identify students who were suffering from depression, bullying, or other serious issues. An affirmative response to a trigger question would be reported to school counseling services and such students would immediately be given support and assistance.
On the first round of implementing their plan, this Connecticut School District had one student answer one of the trigger questions as follows:
"there are some people who call me names and … people start rumors about me that i dont like sometimes i want to die and kill myself before the next day. i feel like everyone hates me and for no reason. ive sometimes been nice but when they bring up the rumor i say realy bad things to keep them away … one day i was thrown a note saying im ###. and it was my by bestfriend ... i lost the only thing that i can trust. i was alone for a long time. if this is un healthy then pleace help me …"
Fortunately, this student was referred to counseling and received the help he needed. (Other similar responses can be found on slide 22 of this informative 38 slide Power Point presentation on Meridens'
