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District receives $389,000 book gift
Sept. 16, 2020
The American Psychological Association donated 31,000 books to the district valued at $389,000 to help students ages ranging from 4 to 14 years old with social emotional learning. The book donation was facilitated by United Way Suncoast. Socially and mentally growing up is hard enough, add these challenging times and it just got harder.
“It’s so important for students to be able to identify, connect, and see themselves represented in books,” said Lisa M. DePaolo, the district’s managing officer of Prevention. “Even if some of the topics are not generally what we see in a typically book selection, we hope that by providing specific, unique themes, we can increase engagement. What a great way to help a child who might be struggling socially or emotionally by using literature to help support and strengthen social emotional skills.”
The books will be distributed in three phases: Student Services employees to include school psychologists, social workers, counselors and behavior specialists who work with students and charter schools will receive books. Resource library and social media specialists will then receive the resources and finally it will be determined who can benefit from the remaining book gift. Book topics include: Stress, Divorce-Therapy, Foster Care-Adoption-Grief (parent death, military parent death, death of a pet)-Trauma/Abuse, School Change-Life Skills (handling emotions).