5 Actionable Ways School Leaders Can Strengthen School Belonging

The first few weeks of school are about more than new schedules and classroom routines. They are the window where students decide, often without realizing it, whether this is a place they belong. That decision shapes how engaged they are in class, how they handle conflict, and whether they feel comfortable asking for help when they need it.

This sense of belonging has a name: school connectedness. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defines it as the belief held by students that adults and peers in their school care about them as individuals, and it identifies connectedness as one of the strongest protective factors for youth mental health. Students who feel connected to their school are less likely to experience depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation. They are also more likely to attend school regularly, perform better academically, and avoid risky behaviors like substance use.

Connectedness does not happen by accident. It is built through deliberate, repeatable systems that school leaders put in place, especially in those critical early weeks when routines and relationships are still forming. Here are five actionable ways school leaders can strengthen connection in the first 30 days of the school year, and why each one matters.

1. Create Consistent Opportunities to Check In

Building trust starts with intentional, non-academic connection. When students feel seen and valued as individuals, their willingness to engage in the classroom increases exponentially.

• Try the 2x10 Relationship Strategy: Encourage homeroom, advisory, or classroom teachers to use the 2x10 approach with students who appear disengaged, anxious, or disconnected. This involves spending 2 minutes a day for 10 consecutive school days conversing with a student about non-academic topics, such as their hobbies, pets, favorite sports, or music.
• Normalize Daily Connections: Encourage staff to greet students by name at the door each morning. These small, low-pressure, micro-interactions consistently signal to students that they belong and matter to the school community.

Twenty minutes spread across two weeks is a small investment. The payoff, a student who trusts at least one adult on campus, can influence everything from classroom behavior to whether that student later feels safe disclosing a struggle at home.

2. Make Support Pathways Visible and Accessible

Feeling connected also means knowing where to turn when something is wrong.

Schools may offer counseling, wellness centers, peer support programs, community partnerships, crisis resources, or external mental health referrals. Yet those resources only help if students and families understand that they exist and know how to access them.

Rather than expecting families to search for information during a difficult moment, make support pathways highly visible from the beginning of the year.

Consider conducting a simple communications audit:

• Is mental health and substance use support clearly identified on your district and school websites?
• Do families receive information about available resources in back-to-school communications?
• Do teachers know what to do when a student shares a mental health concern?
• Can students explain where they would go if they or a friend needed help?
• Are resources available in the primary languages spoken by your school community?
• Is there a clear option for families who need support outside regular school hours?

School leaders can reinforce these pathways by including support information in newsletters, student planners, family resource pages, staff handbooks, orientations, parent nights, and other communications families already receive.

The goal is simple: When someone needs help, they should not have to figure out where to begin.

3. Review Early Warning Indicators as a Leadership Team

Students do not always tell an adult directly that they are struggling.

Sometimes the earliest signal is a pattern: a student who suddenly begins missing school, visiting the nurse more frequently, withdrawing from activities, falling behind academically, or receiving behavioral referrals.

Any one of these changes may have a straightforward explanation. Looking at them together, however, can help school teams recognize when a student may need additional support.

School and district leaders can strengthen early identification by creating regular opportunities for staff to review multiple indicators together.

For example, a biweekly MTSS or student support team meeting might examine:

• Changes in attendance or chronic absenteeism
• Frequent nurse or health office visits
• Behavioral incidents
• Sudden changes in academic performance
• Counselor or teacher referrals
• Withdrawal from extracurricular activities or peer groups
• Family concerns or significant changes at home

The goal is not to treat every change as a mental health concern. It is to ensure information does not remain siloed across departments.

A teacher may notice disengagement. The attendance team may see increasing absences. The nurse may notice repeated visits. Viewed separately, each may seem minor. Viewed together, they may tell a very different story.

Creating a process for sharing those observations can help teams reach students earlier, before challenges escalate.

4.  Make Sure Every Student Has a Trusted Adult 

Research consistently shows that having just one trusted adult at school significantly improves a student's sense of belonging and resilience. The challenge is that this connection often happens by chance rather than by design, which means some students, frequently the quietest ones, are overlooked.

Leaders can close that gap by:

• Conducting a simple relationship-mapping exercise with staff, asking each adult to list the students they feel connected to.
• Cross-referencing those lists against the full roster to identify students who appear on no one's list.
• Intentionally connecting unmatched students with a teacher, counselor, coach, administrator, or other staff member who can commit to building that relationship.

This exercise takes an afternoon to run but can reveal blind spots that would otherwise go unnoticed for an entire school year. Every student deserves at least one adult who would notice if they were struggling.

5. Audit What Happens After a Concern Is Identified

Identifying a struggling student is only half the job. What happens next, who contacts the family, who helps them navigate outside care, who follows up to confirm the family connected with support, determines whether that student actually gets help.

To strengthen this process, school leaders should:

• Clearly define and document the referral process, so it does not rely on institutional memory or a single staff member's habits.
• Assign explicit ownership at each step, from the initial family contact through the final follow-up.
• Build in a follow-up checkpoint, ideally 2 to 4 weeks later, to confirm the family was able to connect with care and did not disengage along the way.

Without a defined and owned process, even well-intentioned referrals can stall. A clear, accountable pathway is what turns identification into actual support.

Extend Your Safety Net Beyond School Walls

School connectedness is built in classrooms, hallways, offices, cafeterias, extracurricular activities, and everyday interactions with trusted adults. But when a student or family needs support beyond what a school can provide, maintaining that sense of connection means helping them take the next step.

Care Solace helps school districts extend their support by connecting students, staff, and families with mental health and substance use providers that meet their insurance, preferences, location, and individual needs.

Instead of placing the burden of navigating provider lists, insurance requirements, availability, and follow-up entirely on families or already-busy school staff, Care Solace helps guide people through the process of finding care.

Building a connected school community does not happen through a single program or initiative. It happens when students consistently experience the message that they are known, they are valued, and support is available when they need it.

As you begin a new school year, consider one final question:

Does every student in your district know who they can turn to, and what happens next when they do?

Learn more about how Care Solace can help your district create a clearer path from concern to care.