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Department of Education to give more than $208 million in grants for school mental health services

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Susannah High, director of student wellness and success at Haywood Community College, flips through a Mental Health First Aid resource. Liz Bell/EdNC

The U.S. Department of Education has awarded more than $208 million to 65 recipients to increase the number of school-based mental health service providers in high-need school districts, according to a Dec. 11 press release. 

The department began reframing its grant priorities for Mental Health Service Professional Demonstration and School-Based Mental Health programs in July, the release says. Those priorities were approved in September after a period of public feedback.

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Those new priorities included changes to the eligibility requirements. Under the new requirements, grant funding could only be sent to state or local educational agencies who would partner with higher education institutions. This change, the press release said, puts state and local school leaders “in the driver’s seat” to decide how to address students’ needs. 

The priorities also included “increas(ing) the number of credentialed school psychologists” and “building necessary capacity and local support to ensure the provision of intensive mental health services beyond the life of the grant.”

According to the department, the latest round of grants will reduce the ratios of students to school psychologists and improve the delivery of mental health interventions in rural and high-need areas. Half of the recipients, which will together receive more than $120 million, serve rural communities, the release said. 

The grants also aim to support the recruitment and retention of school-based mental health service providers and sustain this workforce.

The release says this announcement came after the department discontinued more than 200 school-based mental health grants in April. 

Those grants “prioritized the racial characteristics of providers and divisive ideologies instead of focusing on competent provision of proven mental health interventions for students,” the release says. Some of these decisions have been “set aside,” the department said, due to legal challenges by 16 Democratic attorneys general.

According to a department website, the N.C. Department of Public Instruction received $4.8 million under the Mental Health Service Professional Demonstration Grant Program for the current fiscal year.

The grant abstract says this project “will increase access to mental health services by deploying licensed school psychologists and clinicians across all partner divisions; build workforce capacity through university partnerships, regional internships, and ‘grow-your-own’ training pipelines; implement a multi-tiered system of supports (MTSS) that integrates early identification, targeted intervention, and crisis-level care; provide outreach and telehealth access; and develop long-term sustainability through Medicaid billing systems and cost-sharing agreements among LEAs.”

Ashe County Schools also received a grant under the program for the current fiscal year, of approximately $2.8 million.

According to the abstract document, Ashe County Schools “will build on the success preparing SMH (school mental health) providers to support two rural Appalachian school districts in Alleghany and Ashe counties. In addition to training school psychology students, they will provide training to build staff capacity to collaborate with school psychologists to support youth referrals to early intervention or intensive services.”