Three School Based Therapists within the Marshalltown Community School District made a presentation at the Marshalltown School Board meeting last night. Matt Cretsinger approached the school board in 2024 with the idea of adding therapists in the school district to help students.

That is Tom Ogston, a school-based therapist at Franklin Elementary school. He says they created a criteria to be used to figure out which students would be appropriate for their services.

The team then began working back in August with Cretsinger and through classroom evaluations, interviews with teachers and parents, and working with students they found a list of students to help and a plan of how to give them support without missing core instruction. Megan Steim is the clinical school based therapist at Marshalltown Learning Academy.

They also do group work where they focus on common goals and practice teamwork. Being within the school district has its advantages.

The three school based therapist serve 53 students across the four sites they are at. Madison Wilkerson, a school based therapist at Lenihan talks through some of the results they have found.

At the end of their presentation, the school board was able to ask some questions but the comment that stood out was the fact that Marshalltown is one of a few schools who have in house therapists working with students directly.

Zach Tomesch, News Director KFJB