District reviews school-counseling projects, social-work caseloads and Securly monitoring

The Uintah County School District presented its yearly school-counseling and school-social-work reports on June 18, describing project-based interventions, caseload volumes and the use of an internet-monitoring tool called Securly to flag at-risk student content.

Mindy Merrill, who presented the social-work data, reported 1,347 students received individual social-work support this year with 5,382 total service instances and 1,800 referrals. Social workers conducted 935 classroom lessons and 48 group sessions; the average group size was about 5.5 students. Merrill said common reasons for interventions included mental-health supports, crisis management, behavior interventions and 504-plan supports.

Merrill described Securly's AI-driven filtering on district Chromebooks: the service flags language or searches that suggest self-harm, bullying or crisis behavior. A human review team assesses the alerts and contacts families or refers students to school-based supports when alerts are credible; staff said the system has enabled several timely, safety-critical interventions.

Counselors' data-project vignettes included efforts to reduce failing core classes at Vernal Middle School (a targeted intervention reportedly reduced failures by about 70%), to increase math outcomes for subgroups at Eagle View Elementary, and to expand college-and-career readiness activities at high school sites. The district said some projects are multi-year and will continue through the next school year to track longer-term effects.

Board members praised counselors and social workers for handling heavy caseloads and asked administration to continue investing in prevention and group work to expand reach beyond intensive, one-on-one services. Merrill said the district will aim to strengthen tiered supports and scale group prevention work next year.