CCISD students participating in summer enrichment groups

By BRITTANY FHOLER 

Cove Leader-Press 

Copperas Cove Independent School District currently has 60 students enrolled in its Summer Enrichment Groups program, which launched last week. 

The program splits students up into small groups where the students focus on either social skills, coping skills or anger management. 

The program was open to all students, who are then separated by age and maturity level.

CCISD’s Director of Counseling Rhonda Burnell created the Summer Enrichment Groups program after schools closed early due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“We knew that we needed to do something,” Burnell said. “We knew that kind of being cut off and having their school year cut off would absolutely impact them. How, we don’t know what that really looks like. We don’t know how that will play out in the classroom, and so as a licensed clinician myself - I’m a certified trauma provider - I wanted to be proactive to offer the students in Cove something.”

The program splits the students into four sessions over a two-week period and uses an uses an evidence based curriculum to help the students develop the appropriate skills to manage their own emotions, to be able to deescalate themselves and to be able to interact socially appropriately with their peers.

This will help mitigate or reduce some of the behavior issues that the school staff and parents at home see, according to Burnell. 

Currently, there is only the one two-week session planned but that could change. 

“We see that there’s a need, and as opportunity presents itself, if we see that, we can open up an additional session and offer it again,” Burnell said. “It could be a possibility; but if not, then we’ll have the same sort of opportunity to run the same sort of psychoeducational groups on individual campuses for the school year, again, depending on what that looks like: if we’ll be able to go into the traditional classroom setting or if it looks like we provide some sort of telehealth way to get that out to kiddos if we’re not in a traditional classroom setting.”

Governor Greg Abbott has declared that school will be offered on campus next semester, but it is not clear what that will look like. 

When school resumes in the fall, CCISD counselors will be able to follow up with the students in this program and will be able to measure whether the session was effective, due to each session being document into the school’s database. 

Each student has their temperature checked and hands sanitized before entering and must wear a mask. The students are kept with their same small group for the entire two-week period to reduce the spread of more germs. 

If parents would like to learn more about the program or have questions, they can contact Burnell by email at burnellr@ccisd.com or by phone at 254-547-1227.