The Brockport Central School District has been selected by the American Red Cross to participate as a pilot school district in the Consortium on Trauma, Illness and Grief (TIG) in Schools. The purpose of the Consortium is to offer intensive training and ongoing support around the content areas of illness, grief, trauma and disaster reactions and interventions - not the logistics, which may be individual to each school district. As a pilot district, Brockport will help determine which of several training modules will be most useful for schools.

The district is currently in the process of choosing five staff members, such as counselors, social workers and psychologists, who will comprise a crisis team. The team will begin initial training in the fall with one eight-hour session, along with two-hours of monthly follow-up training for the first six months, and quarterly training thereafter. Fellow staff members will be trained by the team.

The district will also have 24-hour access to a library of resources at the Red Cross and a secure Web site, and can have questions answered by a mental health professional. Brockport will assign one representative to the community-wide TIG School Planning Committee who will actively participate in quarterly meetings and provide regular feedback on the program, so that it may be refined for countywide implementation.