OWENSVILLE — Gasconade County R-2 Family Liaison Sam Mangrum on May 18 presented a mil-tax report to the Gasconade County R-2 Board of Education claiming 50 percent of the district’s enrollment used the liaisons’ services for the 2025-26 school year.

Mangrum said liaisons made 8,012 contacts with students and that 854 students were also served.

“So we share every contact we make and we have eight to 10 categories that we track,” said Mangrum.

Liaisons use attendance concerns, basic needs, academic success, emotional/behavioral concerns, home concerns, crisis assessment, community presentations and outreach to track reasons for students contacting them.

“That could be the same kid 50 times, it could be a kid one or two times, but that is a lot of contacts,” said Mangrum.

Hotline numbers for the year were 167 contacts for child abuse and neglect.

“Unfortunately several kids were removed from their home due to things that aren’t good going on. We’re working on finding placements for those kids,” said Mangrum.

Mangrum said the liaisons are working on finding a safe place for those kids and families.

Behavioral and emotional concerns at 2,899 contacts was the most common reason for a student contacting the liaisons.

“One thing we’re hoping to get involved with for next year is community involvement,” said Mangrum.

Magrum said that she would like to reach out to more businesses and have more people come to the district to talk about the community mental health crisis.

Last year the liaisons had Compass Health come to set up a booth to talk to students about mental health.

Board member Debbie Landolt asked about concerns relating to attendance.

“Is there anything about barriers to attendance? Is it nobody to get (kids) them up ready in the morning?” asked Landolt.

Mangrum said with high schoolers the issues stem from not having the desire to get up and go to school. She said with younger students the parents don’t wake up in the morning and make taking their kids to school a priority.

The liaisons try to make home visits when a student is missing school.

“We might try to wake up a parent up at 11 o’clock, we’ve had some interesting encounters when we do home visits, but a lot of it is just the parents’ engagement and not finding school as a priority.”

The next board of education meeting will be at 6 p.m. on Monday, June 15, in the Administrative Building.