The latest faculty hires at Palmyra Area School District aren’t people, but pups.
The school district this spring will introduce two canines to the classroom environments, with Millie, a Labrador retriever, joining the staff at Northside Elementary School in early March and Rocky, a standard poodle, joining the staff at Palmyra Area High School in early to mid-May.
“It’s a new program,” Kathy Setlock, director of pupil services for the district, told LebTown. “We’re looking to bring in the dogs to help address some of the needs that we see in our buildings. Dogs can offer comfort, friendship. Sometimes kids just connect with dogs better than they would another human in the building. … This gives us another tool to help us provide support for students.”
According to a Feb. 20 letter from Bernie Kepler, district superintendent, the schools contracted with Dog Sense, a Lancaster County-based company, to buy and train the pups to be “facility dogs.”
The Dog Sense website explains that a facility dog is a trained therapy dog, typically owned by a school, nursing home or similar institution. The dog receives the same basic training as a service dog, goes to work each day with its trained caretaker, and works with the caretaker or a separately trained handler “to provide comfort, support, and therapeutic services to the members, patients, students, or residents of that facility.”
Adopting, training & transitioning
Setlock said the first step for each is transitioning into their new homes.
“We have staff members who will have the dogs full-time at their homes. They’ll bring them to school each day,” she explained.
“They’re basically adopting the dogs,” she noted. “The district owns the dogs, so we are taking care of the costs of food and a vet and the supplies they need. But the employees have the dogs, they keep them at home. They can take them to the park or whatever – they’re a family pet.”
Once they’re acclimated to their new homes, Setlock said, “we’ll slowly introduce the dogs to different handlers – we have 10 handlers who have been trained at each building, and the handlers will be able to take the dogs to individual classrooms and to larger group rooms like the library.”
Millie, Setlock said, will be a year old in March. Rocky is just a little bit older.
The dogs will serve a variety of purposes in the schools, Setlock noted. They might be used to motivate certain behaviors in the classroom, or to sit and listen patiently while a child reads. They also can be a calming influence, if a student is anxious or frustrated.
They also will attend school functions, athletic events, and other community activities “so the community and the kids in other buildings can see them.”
However, she said, the dogs “will definitely have a schedule. We want to make sure the dogs aren’t overwhelmed. There will have to be breaks outside. They will need to rest. And they will need to get used to being with their handlers in a new environment.”
Dog plans & ‘no dog’ zones
Setlock said she broached the idea of bringing facility dogs into the district after hearing about the program at other schools.
“Dr. Kepler had been in another district with a facility dog,” she said. “One day, I said, what do you think, should we go down this path? And he was 100% on board. We also reached out to Warwick (in Lancaster County), because we knew they had multiple dogs in their district.
“The idea grew very quickly from there. The hardest part was picking the first two buildings to get them. We made the decision based on student needs.”
Each of the lucky two schools then developed “an individual dog plan,” which includes determining which students might not want to interact with a dog, or even staff members who might not want to be near a dog, Setlock said. Each school also established “no dog” zones since, she admitted, “not everybody loves dogs. Or they might be allergic.”
Overall, however, Setlock said excitement among students, staff and families has been overwhelming.
“When you take a dog into the building, whether it’s first grade or the high school, the kids will all gravitate to the dogs,” she said. “The hardest part is waiting.”
Capital campaign & program expansion
In his letter to Palmyra families, Kepler said the district is running a campaign to raise funds to cover the costs of the program. Although he doesn’t say in the letter how much the dogs, training and support will cost, he notes that “no gift is too large or too small.”
Dog Sense, on its website, recommends that facilities buying into the program raise approximately $10,000 to $15,000 “per dog both for acquisition and ongoing care of that dog once placed.”
Setlock explained that the first two dogs were purchased by the district. The school board, she said, agreed to cover their costs but, “beyond that, we’re looking at other funding sources.” The capital campaign, she said, is intended to help with the costs of their upkeep.
Eventually, she said, they hope to bring dogs to other schools in the district.
“There is definite interest in expanding this program,” Setlock said. “I recently submitted a grant proposal to cover the cost of owning a third dog.”
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