The Arizona Department of Education (ADE) announced on Thursday that it has entered a multi-year partnership with The Jed Foundation (JED) to expand the state’s training options for school mental health professionals. According to the ADE, JED is a resource that “protects emotional health and prevents suicide among teens and young adults nationwide.”
The ADE and JED shared that nearly 1 in 4 high school students in Arizona report seriously considering a suicide attempt every year, with 1 in 10 attempting.
Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne said in a press release, “Across student age groups, suicide is one of the leading causes of death. It is imperative that our mental health professionals are provided with the latest information to help recognize and the best practices to respond to the warning signs that may help families avert these devastating tragedies.”
The initiative with JED will provide school mental health professionals with “an evidence-informed suicide prevention training course,” according to the ADE. The initiative was designed based on Arizona’s policies, staffing structures, and cultural and educational contexts, the Jed Foundation stated.
“School-based mental health supports are critical to student well-being, stronger academic outcomes, and preparing young people for the workforce and future opportunities,” Dr. Tony Walker, senior vice president of school programs and consulting at JED, said in a statement. “We’re proud to partner with ADE and help to ensure Arizona’s school-based mental health professionals are prepared and confident to identify warning signs, act quickly in a crisis, and connect students to the right support so they can thrive in school and in life.”
According to JED, the two-hour training course, entitled “Suicide Prevention for Arizona School Mental Health Professionals,” will train attendees to:
Identify signs of self-injury and crisis, including signs of suicidal thoughts or intense emotional distress.
Understand the role of suicide risk screening in a comprehensive prevention approach and learn how to administer screening tools.
Take action when a student is in crisis by engaging the support team, ensuring immediate safety, and documenting and following school protocols (or helping to establish protocols, when needed).
The Peoria Unified School District (PUSD) is seeking federal funds to renew the Mental Health Service Professionals (MHSP) Demonstration Grant through the Department of Education (ED). The grant would enable the district to expand its program for unlicensed behavioral health workers. The grant application includes assertions to garner sympathy and support, such as highlighting low student-to-behavioral health worker ratios, funding cuts, and increased student academic issues post-COVID. There is just one problem: the initiative is flawed and poorly justified when scrutinized, raising several critical concerns.
If renewed, the MHSP grant would enable PUSD to hire additional counselors and social workers, asserting that they will assist students deemed to have mental health issues that purportedly hinder academic performance. A primary concern is the qualification of these personnel and the poor track record in this type of intervention in improving academic proficiency.
In a recent Substack piece, Attorney Chris Evans points out that the district refers to the personnel to be hired as “mental health professionals,” which Evans argues is “a title inflation for a person with no license from a professional board, no regulatory oversight, but is certified by the Arizona Department of Education to work in schools with zero scope of practice limitations.” This raises grave concerns about the effectiveness of mental health assistance and the safety of children under the care of these individuals.
PUSD staff and board members persist in claiming that behavioral health services enhance academic outcomes. However, the evidence to support this assertion is lacking. Robust independent research indicates this claim is false and seems to justify seeking federal funds rather than being a fact-based strategy.
For example, a close examination of PUSD academic assessments from 2017-2018 to 2023 reveals minimal improvement over five years in attempting to integrate behavioral health services into its schools; the expected improvements in academic performance have not materialized. During the first grant period, state assessment scores show no significant progress, and in subjects like math, the scores have declined. This stagnation indicates the lack of effectiveness of the rationale for the project’s federal funding and suggests that the behavioral health program has not delivered the promised academic benefits. If these programs cannot demonstrate a clear, positive impact on student achievement, their expansion, and current presence in schools are suspicious.
The ideological motivations behind this push for more behavioral health services cannot be ignored. The emphasis on social justice and equity indicated in the grant application may overshadow the primary goal of educational institutions: to enhance academic achievement. The current approach appears to conflate these objectives, potentially at the expense of educational quality.
The current justification for renewing this grant employed by PUSD is misguided. At the May 29 meeting, board President Becky Proudfit asked the grant administrator if the first grant initiated in 2019 had been effective and what the effect had been on the students in the district. During his response, the administrator admitted that he thinks, “It’s just really important to note that it’s hard to determine the overall success of the grant.” And still, the PUSD board voted 4-1 to renew the Mental Health Service Professionals (MHSP) Demonstration Grant for another five years.
It is time for PUSD to reevaluate its priorities and ensure that any funded programs are accountable and effective. Most importantly, addressing mental health in students is important, yet fundamentally within the authority and responsibility of parents and guardians, not schools.
Tamra Farah has a twenty-year career in public policy and politics. Her role as director and senior advisor at Americans for Prosperity, FreedomWorks, and Arizona Women of Action and her expertise in PR and communications demonstrates her ability to create engagement and transformation in her efforts. Tamra has appeared on Fox News, America’s Voice, Newsmax, and Victory Channel and is quoted in major publications like The New York Times and Washington Post.
Peoria Unified School District (PUSD) has approved an application for expansion of federally-funded mental health clinics to seven schools. Board member Heather Rooks was the sole “no” vote on the measure.
The funds are part of a five-year award with the Mental Health Service Professionals (MHSP) Demonstration Grant through the Department of Education (ED).
PUSD was one of 27 school districts nationwide to receive MHSP grant funding originally in 2019. Through that grant, expiring at the end of September, PUSD has maintained three social work field instructors. This new round of funding will maintain and expand the mental health services to those schools without them.
The 2019 MHSP grant funded partnerships with the internship pipelines in Northern Arizona University, Grand Canyon University, and Arizona State University; social work intern field instructors; training for school social workers and school mental health counselors; conference attendance; training school social worker interns (totalling 83); training for teachers, staff, and administrators; purchasing of skill building materials and resources; and parental resources. All of these would be funded through the 2024 grant to a greater degree to include those schools without MHSP resources.
The district’s seven schools, which represent 24 percent of the student population, that don’t have direct mental health services are: Cactus High School, Liberty High School, Oakwood Elementary School, Sunset Heights Elementary School, Frontier Elementary School, and Vistancia Elementary School.
Across these schools, the district reported in its grant narrative draft elementary students exhibiting greater instances of self-harming behaviors, suicidal ideation, anxiety, depression, aggression, bullying, cyberbullying, poor relationship skills, and poor conflict resolution skills. High school students were reportedly exhibiting similar behaviors, including a handful of suicides and attempted suicides in the last school year.
In that school year, the district reported just over 1,200 “crises events” that required intervention: suicide risks, child abuse or neglect, or severe emotional distress.
The district has about 34,700 students across 43 schools, with about 47 percent qualifying for free or reduced lunch. PUSD is the fourth-largest district in the state.
Public comment against the measure expressed concerns about student safety, such as data mining and “lab rat” handling of the students. Some wondered why the district would offer such a private service that they considered to be a parental responsibility.
A supporter of the measure, Vanessa Goolsby with the Peoria Education Association, said that it was the social workers that prevented the “bad things” from happening to children.
The board defended the expansion of social workers as a much-needed resource.
Melissa Ewing said that concerned community members were confusing the mental health services provided by schools and the medical community. Ewing said the former isn’t comprehensive, in that the district doesn’t staff doctors, provide diagnoses, or prescribe medications.
Ewing stressed that social work intervention doesn’t occur without parental consent, and that the data supports social work intervention as effective in improving academic performance.
David Sandoval said the expansion of services was needed due to the rise in mental health issues.
Board member Bill Sorensen said that the social workers have done good work for children in need beyond mental health services.
Rooks expressed concern that the district was taking on mental health cases instead of referring families to outside providers, and contested that some diagnoses must be happening for the district to be able to report identifying certain behavioral problems.
Rooks said that State Representative Beverly Pingerelli, a former board member, described the initial MHSP grant from 2019 as part of a much smaller initiative that, she says, has grown way out of proportion. She also contested the claim that the social workers operate under parental permission, noting that one parent’s son had been pulled numerous times from classes to discuss his mental health with a social worker — without parental consent — despite undergoing outside treatment arranged by his parents.
President Becky Proudfit said that she trusted the district social workers to provide healthy and safe services to students, and that her own children have benefited from them.
Watch the PUSD discussion of the MHSP grant here:
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