Dripping Springs School District – Case Study

How Dripping Springs Independent School District leveraged Terrace Metrics to provide better social and academic support to students after the COVID pandemic

Solution

In Hays County, Texas, Dripping Springs Independent School District oversees 8,400 enrolled students across five elementary schools, two middle schools, and one high school. The district also operates a central administration/child development center and transportation service center.

After the COVID pandemic closures ended and schools went back to in-school instruction, the district searched for a tool to support students who were silently suffering negative outcomes from the pandemic experience.

“Sometimes, the students that have the most struggles aren’t always the most obvious to the educators in their life,” said Tisha Kolek, Director of Counseling and Health Services. “ Our school district wanted to find a way to identify those students. That way, we could hold intentional interventions to help them achieve success, both in their social development and in their academic development.”

After a rigorous vetting process for the right tool for the job, the district chose Terrace Metrics.

“Our counseling services team selected Terrace Metrics as our partner largely because of the customer service partnership that Dr. Gilman and his team brought to us,” said Tisha. “We met with him several times throughout the selection journey to learn more about what Terrace Metrics had to offer before we brought it to our students.”

The counseling services team decided to first pilot Terrace Metrics’s system to ensure that it was a fit and would add value to its program, and the pilot was a success.

“We achieved fifty percent buy-in after a soft launch,” said Tisha. “That was enough to get the project the green light.”

Terrace Metrics helps schools and districts measure their students’ and teachers’ risk and resiliency to positively impact educational outcomes. Since 2018, Terrace Metrics’s system has been administered over 3 million times.

“Our entire counseling services team is excited to work with Terrace Metrics,” said Tisha. “I’ve been in school counseling for quite a while, and I’ve never seen a tool that assesses a student’s protective factors and risk factors, rates them on a priority scale, and then provides a curriculum to enhance those skills so that they become strengths. This tool does all of that.”

Thanks to Terrace Metrics’s surveying process, the district has been able to accurately identify students needing support in the areas of anxiety and depression.

“Since the pandemic, the number of adolescent students struggling with anxiety and depression has increased dramatically,” said Tisha. “Furthermore, mental health services are limited, and there are a lot of access challenges and barriers to seeking outside-the-school-day help. That’s why it’s important that our school counseling team embeds much-needed services during the school day with intention and strategy. Thanks to Terrace Metrics, we’re working with the right students and using the right skills.”