St. Martin of Tours School employs a part-time school counselor whose role is to ensure that students are provided the opportunity to succeed at school. Student assistance is a school-based professional process of early identification, screening, referral, and support for students with identified needs which may be affecting school performance and healthy development. This process utilizes concrete, observable data such as the student's grades, attendance records, behavior, and social skills to help identify individual needs. Students are normally referred when classroom interventions and adjustments have been unsuccessful. Parents will be notified of the reasons for the referral and will be requested to contact the school to schedule a meeting with the school counselor to discuss the observations noted in the teacher referral. In the event that the school counselor recommends further screening, a list of three names of qualified persons will be provided as referrals.
A copy of the evaluation must be given to the school in order to assist teachers in providing appropriate instruction for the student. Evaluation results are used to develop an intervention plan based on supporting data. A confidential record of each student evaluated is maintained separate from a student's cumulative record and is not a part of a student's transcript. Those students who are identified as needing additional assistance for academic progress must be provided with such assistance by the parents i.e. tutor and/or educational therapist. It will be the obligation of the parent/s to follow the recommendation of the school such as providing remediation, outside tutoring, or a shadow. The school must be made aware of any information that affects the student's ability to benefit from instruction in the regular classroom.
The school counselor may also make emergency student interventions of a temporary nature (e.g. illness, fighting, infrequent peer difficulties, situational anxiety, etc.). While these types of emergency interventions do not require prior parental consent as they are unexpected and may be one-time occurrences, all other intervention processes will require parental consent.
