The Mississippi School Safety Act of 2019 states that beginning in the 2019-2020 school year, the State Department of Education shall require local school districts to conduct, every two (2) years, refresher training on mental health and suicide prevention for all school employees and personnel, including all cafeteria workers, custodians, bus drivers, teachers and administrators. The Mississippi Department of Mental Health is responsible for the development and/or selection of the content of the training and schools are required to report completion of the training to the State Department of Education. Districts can select from the list of recommended courses on pages 3-5 in the attached document to meet this requirement.
Once all school employees have been trained, the District Training Sign Off form should be completed and uploaded to SharePoint. Instructions for uploading to SharePoint may be found in the attached document on pages 6-8.
All forms and additional information may be found on the Suicide-Bullying Prevention webpage on the Mississippi Department of Education website.
The deadline for submission for the 2020-2021 school year is May 31, 2021. Additionally, all District Training Sign Off forms from previous years (2017-2018, 2018-2019, 2019-2020) should be uploaded to SharePoint by December 31, 2020.
Please direct questions to Chandrea Walker at cswalker@mdek12.org or Kathy Mangum at klmangum@mdek12.org.