In the years following devastating Sonoma County wildfires and the Covid pandemic, student mental health worsened.
Through the pandemic and its immediate aftermath, school districts received increased state funding to support these needs. They created wellness centers for students to access therapy services and grew the ranks of school-site staff trained to help students in distress.
Special or one-time funds supporting those programs, however, are now largely gone, leaving many local school systems in a bind: How to sustain services that help some of the most at-risk students while addressing multi-million dollar deficits?
The fiscal reckoning requires cuts, and mental health resources are often the first to go.
This is the reality for Sonoma County’s largest district, Santa Rosa City Schools, which announced last month that it will eliminate 75% of its school-based therapists, or about 10 positions, as part of a downsizing strategy to chip away at the $23 million it must cut by the end of next school year, equating to about 10% of its budget. Without clear progress and major structural change, the district is at risk of state takeover, officials have warned while laying the groundwork for the layoffs, which are likely to extend to hundreds of teachers and other staff members in notices expected next month.
In the last calendar year, the district has provided have provided about 6,500 services to about 1,300 individual students, according to the district’s spokesperson Patrick Gannon. The district has about 13,000 students.
To preserve the resources that remain, Santa Rosa and other districts are eying a 2024 law that allowed school districts to begin billing health care insurers for related programs and staff. That program, called the Children and Youth Behavioral Health initiative, created a pathway where districts could get reimbursed for either a portion of or the entire cost of a mental health program or staff provider.
“There isn’t already a sustainable way to provide mental health services to schools,” said Tyson Dickinson, a director in the Sonoma County Office of Education’s Behavioral Health and Well-Being department. The reimbursement pathway “is for sustaining programs that are already happening and potentially growing those programs.”
The state shift is aimed at making mental health care more readily available to students where they spend the greatest amount of their time — on campuses — while also recognizing that shortfalls in outside care make it likely that many aren’t getting the help they need.
“California realized that students aren’t accessing care that they should be getting outside of school because of transportation, hours, parents working two jobs, or waiting lists from Kaiser or private insurance,” he said. “Students are at schools and there’s a way to provide services at schools, so let’s increase the access to these services by providing reimbursements.”
The rollout has been slow, Sonoma County education leaders note, due to a complicated set-up that requires extensive training for district staff and buy-in from parents to share their insurance and consent to be billed.
“It’s unfortunate that this rollout is happening at the same time that so many districts are experiencing significant budget challenges, which I think leads people to say: ‘We need this, why is it taking so long?’ when actually it probably isn’t taking longer than it should – it’s a lot of training and it’s very complex,” Dickinson said. “Only a few of Sonoma County’s 40 districts have begun billing their students’ insurance for mental health needs in the years following the legislation.”
Reimbursements can be filed for students with Medical, private insurance or disability insurance. There are no fees or financial impact to families who consent to have their insurance billed.
Even if a student does not use campus mental health services, with parental consent their insurance can be tapped to help support programs for the wider student body.
“This is a way that families can take action to support preserving wellness and mental health programs in their schools,” said Shauna Hamilton, program coordinator in the county education office’s Behavioral Health and Well-Being department. “Even if your student isn’t getting a one-on-one service, you’re supporting more mental health and wellness programs in schools for all students.”
Still, county education officials are warning school districts to not rely on the reimbursement process as their only revenue source for mental health programs.
“It’s a piece of the funding on how to support these programs,” said Maura Bunch, a director in the county education office’s Behavioral Health and Well-Being department. “It needs to be blended with other funding sources in a district. It’s a good way to substantially reduce costs for a district, but it’s not going to be the cure-all.”
At a time when many Sonoma County districts are struggling to balance their finances, any additional revenue to offset expenses could make a significant impact.
Santa Rosa City Schools spends about $1.2 million per year for 14 school-based therapists.
The district is one of few across the county that have the reimbursement process up and running. The district has been able to bring in about $100,000 in revenue for their programs so far, according to Eric Lofchie, the district’s director of mental health and community schools.
They were unable to start billing until January 2025 due to the format of the state rollout, which organized school districts into cohorts. In the year since, district leaders and mental health staff have collected insurance information and consent to bill from about half of families.
With the limited special funds now coming in, Lofchie said his team has relied on grants and partnerships to preserve as many mental health resources as they can.
Just last week, the district was approved for a $115,720 grant under the Children and Youth Behavioral Health Initiative, to provide gap funding as the system seeks reimbursement from students’ insurance.
Lofchie said the district also relies on the county office of education’s Crisis, Assessment, Prevention and Education program, called CAPE, that provides intervention services for students in mental health crises.
“We really hope as times get more and more challenging that those partnerships allow us to get more continuity, but we’re going to spend the rest of the year to get as many reimbursements through the fee schedule and get as much preserved as we can,” Lofchie said.
The Santa Rosa district has identified almost $400,000 in reimbursements for next school year.
Report For America corps member Adriana Gutierrez covers education and child welfare issues for The Press Democrat. You can reach her at Adriana.Gutierrez@pressdemocrat.com.
