Emily Lemons

SCED 505
H. Thompson
4.12.17
Comprehensive Program Design Summary

To summarize the purpose of our program, I want to address the nature of our

intentions when given this opportunity to design. The site we chose was Pacific Middle School

in Vancouver, WA, in Evergreen Public Schools. Pacific is one of many sites that have a program

that services students who are homeless, or who are in transition of housing. The Students in

Transition (SIT) program has many supports built into it, but we found some areas that could

use extra supports and improvements to make the program as effective as possible. From this

point, we contacted the SIT site person at Pacific, and contacted the SIT district liaison, who

ensures that all building in the district are providing McKinney-Vento (MV) services to their

students who qualify.

After gathering information from these contacts, we targeted areas that needed

improvement such as building awareness with the training of faculty, shifting towards a more

inclusive and open school culture, improving the availability and accessibility of resources, and

creating more effective academic supports. We also noticed a lack in a family/community

resource room and found out only elementary buildings have these in the district due to

funding. Our goal then became to build staff awareness to reach all MV eligible students,

address the personal/social/emotional development needs in school culture/climate, create

more MV resources at the middle school site, and to provide academic supports like academic

flexibility and mentors to create school stability.

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To summarize our understanding of program evaluation, needs assessment, and data

based decision-making, I will make the connection that we used data-based decision-making to

influence how our program will be evaluated through the use of surveys/needs assessments,

inventory from our resource center, and overall tracking of student numbers. Our program will

collect data from attendance, academics, discipline, an annual housing assessment, school

culture/climate survey, mentor survey, needs assessment survey, and inventory and tracking

data from our Family and Community Resources Center. With the collection of this data, we can

make annual changes to the program to better fit the needs of our MV population, and to track

the growth of our program by the number of how many students we have been able to reach.

With this data, we would also be able to provide evidence that might be needed for any

systemic changes our school would need to address, or other schools in the district.

The overview of creating a comprehensive personal-social guidance program was guided

by the ASCA Mindsets and Behaviors (2017). We wanted to address these mindsets and

behaviors as they are connected to all three domains in the ASCA National Standards of

academic development, career development, and personal/social development (ASCA, 2004).

As the project needed a focus on personal/socials domains, we felt that our all of our

interventions targeted the standards we needed to address. We have also seen a shift while at

our Micro Internship sites that counselors are now referring more to mindsets and behaviors,

and that this might be how we as counselors will evaluate programs or interventions in our

future professions.

As for research, it was easy to find sources that supported our interventions. There was

lots of access to studies related to each specific intervention and to the project as a whole. The
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National Center for Homeless Education (2017) provided resources for the definition of MV

student eligibility, MV Liaison training tool kits, and MV Program Standards that we used for our

staff interventions. The MV Program standards we used to guide what our interventions

needed to address in order to create a successful Students in Transition program. We also felt it

necessary to not only give the definition of MV eligibility but also the background information

of how the law came to place. The Department of Education (2016) provided history on

McKinney-Vento, and it explained that “highly mobile students, including homeless students,

indicate that a student can lose academic progress with each school change,” and that “highly

mobile students have also been found to have lower test scores and worse overall academic

performance than peers who do not change schools frequently” (Department of Education,

2016).

There were many resources found for school climate and studies that support the

social/emotional needs for consistent and stabile environments for students of high mobility

and students who are homeless. As for academics, we found studies on how providing

flexibility for students in transition by means of allowing time after school to work on

homework or extending due dates would improve academic successes. Another support for this

was also found within our community mentorship program, as these students have risk for high

adverse experiences yet have the same capacity for resilience as any other student. To build

these resilience, the support of staff and community member mentors would be connected to

our MV students to build positive adult relationships and build a commitment to their learning.

We also applied different assets of the 40 developmental assets to back up our intervention

research.
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Overall, this project was really informative and applicable to my future school

counseling career, as it gave me access to more knowledge on how to build awareness of the

McKinney-Vento Act within a school, and gave me insight on how the interventions we created

can help reach all students who are eligible for MV supports.
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References

American School Counselor Association (2004). ASCA national standards for students.

Alexandria, VA: Author.

American School Counselor Association (2017). ASCA mindsets and behaviors for student
success: K-12 college and career readiness standards for every student. Retrieved from:
https://www.schoolcounselor.org/asca/media/asca/home/MindsetsBehaviors.pdf

Department of Education (2016, July 27). Education for Homeless Children and Youths Program

Non-Regulatory Guidance Title VII-B of the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, as

amended by the Every Student Succeeds Act. Retrieved April 9, 2017 from
https://www2.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/essa/160240ehcyguidance072716.pdf

Nche.ed.gov. (2017). Homeless liaison toolkit. Retrieved from:

http://nche.ed.gov/pr/liaison_toolkit.php