When Penny made her way into last month’s Quaker Valley school board meeting, board members smiled and some administrators took pictures.

The 2-year-old purebred bulldog has that impact on everyone at the high school, Principal Deborah Riccobelli said at the April 26 voting session.

Penny trained at Misty Pines Pet Co. and Dog Park in Sewickley for about 15 months to become a certified therapy dog.

She is the key to a new pilot program designed to ease stress and foster positivity in the school.

“The anecdotal feedback from staff and students has been tremendously positive,” Riccobelli said. “I’ve heard things (such as), ‘I just hear her toenails clicking and it feels me with joy.’

“Some kids don’t even see her, and they just know she’s there … Coming out of the year we’ve had last year and what we’re facing, I think that everyone has just felt the addition of Penny has been very positive. She’s just become part of our culture at the high school.”

Penny was accompanied by her owner, high school paraprofessional Rob Johnson.

Her presence led into a presentation about the various district efforts geared toward improving mental health, as well as the students’ personal and social well-being.

School counselors and psychologists made a 30-minute video covering things at each facility.

They highlighted the district’s multi-tiered support system and related services, how individual counseling and group counseling is provided based on student needs and a K-5 social-emotional learning curriculum called Move This World.

Some of the other programs mentioned include Kindness Week, Children’s Grief Awareness Week, the annual food drive, Start with Hello Week and Mr. Rogers Cardigan Day.

Officials also noted Edgeworth Elementary has a Zen Den, a room where students can relax and wind down. Osborne Elementary is in the process of creating a sensory room.

The video was posted under the “presentations” tab of the school board section of the district’s website, qvsd.org.

Mike Lewis, district director of student services, said it was important to showcase all the work his department has put in and continues to do.

“You can see the value to sharing all that information with you,” Lewis told the board. “Updating exactly what we’re doing to be proactive, to be responsive, to be supportive and also to be mindful.”

Lewis hinted at how there is a major emphasis on students’ mental health coming out of the pandemic, where learners had to learn remotely at various times the past few years.

The district brought back, in a modified form, an eighth-grade field trip this school year that had been canceled the previous two.

“We’re navigating times in our buildings and in our community like never before,” Lewis said. “We’ve had students who haven’t done school for quite some time is probably the best way to put it.

“Our youngest students that needed that foundation of what it means to be in school; what it means to have empathy, understanding, compassion and all of those things. We really had to work to catch some of that up. As a result, we are seeing behaviors that we would not have typically seen in normal circumstances.”

Lewis said the department will continue to monitor student behaviors, gather data and make any necessary adjustments.

Superintendent Tammy Andreyko commended the student services team.

“We thank you for your leadership and the leadership and the leadership of the whole entire department,” Andreyko said. “To speak with such pride and such compassion, the professionalism that they show. They are truly leaders in our community in these many fields in helping our young students not just learn content, but learn about themselves and learn about how to function within a greater society with each other.”

Copyright ©2025— Trib Total Media, LLC (TribLIVE.com)