Healing-Centered Schools in NYC: A Resource Page
Every child deserves a school where they feel safe, supported, and ready to learn.
Students can’t succeed academically when they’re carrying the weight of trauma, instability, bullying, violence, or chronic stress. Too often, schools respond to struggling students with punishment instead of support.
Healing-centered schools take a different approach—building environments where students, educators, and families can thrive.
Join us in making healing-centered schools the standard across New York City.
What You’ll Find:
What is a Healing Centered School?
A healing-centered school recognizes that students learn best when they feel safe, connected, and supported. Rather than asking “What’s wrong with this student?” healing-centered schools ask “What happened, and what support does this student need to succeed?”
Schools often fail to recognize the root cause of a students’ behavioral issue and are quick to use punitive-only approaches—police intervention, frequent suspensions, and calls to EMS.
This ignore students’ socio-emotional needs and re-traumatizes students, making it difficult for them to learn, form relationships, and succeed in life.
Schools that build a culture of healing, however, can reverse the effects of trauma, boost academic engagement, and promote lifelong social emotional well-being.
Why Do Healing Centered Schools Matter?
Students can’t succeed academically when they’re carrying the weight of trauma, instability, bullying, violence, and chronic stress. Too often, schools respond to struggling students with punishment rather than support and understanding they need to feel safe and supported.
Healing-centered schools take a different approach—building environments where students, educators, and families can thrive.
NYC Students Face Unique Challenges
As the weight of an increasingly harmful and dangerous world weighs on the shoulders of all our students, we are called to create spaces where students can actually heal and learn. A healing-centered approach addresses the barriers that prevent students from thriving.
What the Evidence Shows
School districts that have implemented healing-centered practices have seen positive outcomes for everyone, including meeting students’ social emotional needs, staff wellness, parent/caregiver trust, and school culture.
Denver Public Schools
Denver has implemented restorative practices, social-emotional learning, and multi-tiered systems of support in many schools as part of broader district reforms.
Documented outcomes:
- Four-year graduation rates increased from 43% (2008) to 71% (2019).
- Students gained the equivalent of 9–14 additional months of learning in English language arts and math compared with similar Colorado districts.
- Academic gains were seen across student demographic groups.
- Targeted support frameworks helped improve growth in both higher- and lower-performing schools, particularly in math.
Oakland Unified School District
Oakland is one of the nation’s best-known examples of implementing restorative justice and trauma-informed practices districtwide.
Documented outcomes:
- Significant reductions in suspensions after restorative justice implementation.
- Improved school climate and stronger student-teacher relationships.
- Narrowing racial disparities in discipline.
- Increased attendance in schools with mature restorative justice programs.
- Higher graduation rates at several schools implementing restorative practices for multiple years.
These findings have been documented by independent evaluations from researchers at Stanford University and the American Institutes for Research.
Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction
Washington has adopted statewide social-emotional learning standards and increasingly encourages trauma-informed and healing-centered practices.
Documented outcomes:
- Improved student engagement
- Better school climate
- Stronger family partnerships
- Increased graduation and GED completion among students participating in re-engagement programs such as Open Doors.
- Greater participation in postsecondary education and employment for students who remained engaged in supportive programs.
What Schools Can Do To Become Healing-Centered
Broadly, NYC schools can adopt the following recommendations to become more healing centered:
- Remove punitive and criminalizing school structures that undermine healing, including School Safety Agents, metal detectors, and criminalizing language;
- Adopt Suspension diversion programs
- Advance anti-racism through Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education, anti-bias education, peer reviews of staff responses to behavior, and community-building using restorative justice practices and other strategies;
- Provide additional support to students with specific needs related to bullying, behavioral crises, or housing instability;
- Implement healing-centered responses to behavior, including empathetically re-directing students who engage in disruptive behavior, train staff to understand the roots of challenging behavior, and preventative strategies staff can use to reduce disruptive behavior
Our report, Community Roadmap to Bring Health-Centered Schools to NYC, provides a menu of changes that schools can include in their Healing-Centered Plans including academic practices, non-academic practices, and school-based services
District 9 Pilot Program: How Healing-Centered Schools Are Already Working in the Bronx
In 2023, with support from the New York Community Trust, the The Healing-Centered Schools Working Group launched a pilot program at 12 schools in the Bronx’s District 9 aimed at fostering healing centered approaches to education.
Through the formation of Transformation Teams that develop and implement a Healing-Centered Plan, the program seeks to develop a culture that allows students and staff to overcome trauma-related obstacles to teaching and learning.
Our Impact in District 9 So Far
Growing Leaders
- 25 Parent Healing Ambassadors trained
- 32 student leaders developed
- Parents now leading workshops and mentoring other families
Transforming Schools
- 12 Bronx schools engaged
- 6 active school transformation teams
- Regular parent circles, wellness events, and restorative practices embedded into school life
Supporting Students
- 20+ workshops delivered on mental health, restorative practices, special education, and parent leadership
- 29 legal cases resolved or supported for students and families
Changing Systems
- Healing-centered practices adopted as a District 9 priority
- Strong partnerships with NYC Public Schools leadership
- Model positioned for expansion to all 48 District 9 schools—and ultimately citywide
This framing balances measurable results with the broader cultural and systemic change that the initiative has achieved, making it especially compelling for funders, educators, policymakers, and families alike.
How Parents and Educators Can Get Involved
If you would like to get involved in helping your child’s school become more healing centered, our Healing-Centered Schools Working Group has identified 7 Steps to Healing-Centered Transformation. Each school is unique and will begin their journey at a different step in the process.
- STEP 1: Get People Involved: Begin to understand trauma and its impact on Bronx students. Mobilize members of your school community.
- STEP 2: Form a Transformation Team: Launch a Transformation Team of passionate individuals to facilitate change in your school community.
- STEP 3: Assess Needs & Goals: Engage in conversations with your school community. Conduct surveys and focus groups. Identify areas of need and changes that community members want to see.
- STEP 4: Create a Healing-Centered Plan: Develop a Healing-Centered Plan to address the needs and goals that your Transformation Team has identified.
- STEP 5: Implementation – Train Your Community: Educate your school community about trauma, its impact on learning and behavior, and healing-centered educational practices.
- STEP 6: Implementation – Change School Culture: Adopt practices that promote healing, remove those practices that harm community members and undermine healing, and build community in your school.
- STEP 7: Assessing Impact: Evaluate your Healing-Centered Plan, identify new needs and goals, and maintain the momentum of healing-centered change.
Reach out to Healing Centered Schools Working group at [email protected] or 718-928-3745 for more information on how to get involved.
Meet the Healing Centered Schools Working Group
If you would like to get involved in helping your child’s school become more healing centered, our Healing-Centered Schools Working Group has identified 7 Steps to Healing-Centered Transformation. Each school is unique and will begin their journey at a different step in the process.
[PICTURES OF STAFF HERE or GROUP SHOT]
RESOURCES:
Join us. Demand Justice.
In this extraordinarily challenging moment, your partnership with LSNYC is critical. Please join us by making your gift today.