Randolph Academy Wins Award Of Excellence
RANDOLPH – A Randolph school recently won the Award of Excellence from PresenceLearning which recognizes outstanding leadership and student progress in special education.
Randolph Academy Union Free School District was honored with the award by PresenceLearning, a leading telehealth network of live, online special education-related services providers. The program recognized six educational organizations nationwide, including the academy, for leadership, teamwork and outstanding progress in helping students with special needs succeed.
The Randolph Academy is a special act school which serves students who need a small school setting and more support services because of emotional and behavioral needs which has two campuses, one located in Randolph and the other in Hamburg. The school serves about 200 students in kindergarten-through-12th grade.
“If a student is having a rough day, our counselors’ first priority is to provide on-the-spot support, meaning they sometimes have to cancel regularly scheduled sessions with other students,” said Lori DeCarlo, Randolph Academy superintendent. “That was frustrating for our students, so we turned to PresenceLearning for online behavioral and mental health services to provide regular skill development sessions, which freed-up our on-site counselors for crisis counseling when needed.”
Since beginning the online and behavioral and mental health services during the 2015-16 school year, the 20 students utilizing PresenceLearning have made progress on or achieved their individualize education program. Two students met those goals and were able to return to their original school district which is the goal.
“I dismissed online therapy because I didn’t think our students would engage in pre-recorded, canned sessions,” DeCarlo said. “It wasn’t until I realized this was a living, breathing mental health professional conducting live sessions with students via videoconferencing that I had my ‘a-ha’ moment. It’s been amazing to see.”
The award winners, which includes Randolph Academy, were chosen due to student progress, engagement indicators, strong leadership, parental support and team collaboration with online clinicians during the 2015-16 school year.
For more information, visit presencelearning.com.
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