Bob Jensen, Board President; Vicki Engbrecht, Superintendent; Catherine Nicholas, Principal; Shazia Shah, Psychologist; ERICS Team, Sequoia Therapists; Brandi Davis, Administrator; Nicholas Betty, Director of Counseling
Studies show one in 10 adolescents will have a mental health challenge that is so severe, it will affect how they function at home, school or in the community. Half of these students will dropout of high school — this is the highest dropout rate of any disability group. Sequoia School is an alternative, therapeutic program resting on a small, serene campus within the Hart district. Each year, Sequoia supports 55 of the district’s most emotionally fragile students who struggle to attend a traditional campus due to their severe mental health needs. Sequoia provides a holistic approach to education for these students through a unique, layered model of support at the system level, through a Self-Regulation Pyramid of schoolwide interventions, and at the student level, through its intensive Therapeutic Counseling Program provided by five full-time therapists on-site, and an intervention/quad therapist. Without school-based supports, these students may never finish high school.