Libraries, Education and Neighborhoods Committee 7112024

Good morning, everyone.

The July 11th, 2024 meeting of the Library's Education and Neighborhoods Committee will come to order.

It's 9.36 a.m.

I'm Maritza Rivera, chair of the committee.

Excuse me.

I would like to note that Councilmember Moore is joining us virtually today.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember Hollingsworth?

Councilmember Moore?

Sorry, one more time.

Council Member Moore.

She's raising her hand.

She's present.

She's raising her hand.

That's her present.

Okay.

Council Member Morales.

Here.

Council Member Wu.

Present.

Council Member Rivera.

Present.

Four council members are present.

Thank you.

There's one item of business on today's agenda.

If there's no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

We will now open the public comment period.

Public comments should relate to items within the purview of this committee.

Clerk, how many speakers are signed up today?

We currently have zero in-person speakers signed up and there is one remote speaker.

Thank you.

Public comment period will be moderated in the following period.

Excuse me, manner.

The public comment period is up to 20 minutes.

Each speaker will have two minutes.

Speakers will be called in the order which they registered.

We will start with in-person first, although today we don't have any in-person, so we'll start with the online.

Speakers will hear a chime when 10 seconds are left of their time.

The public comment period is now open.

The first remote speaker is Oliver Misca.

Speaker, please press star six.

When you hear the prompt, you have been unmuted.

One moment, we're having a technical issue.

Usually someone else will do it for you, but let's just look and see.

Clerk, please note Council Member Moore's microphone isn't working.

Yeah.

Okay, will the speaker please press star six when you hear the prompt if you have been unmuted.

There we go.

No, you don't wanna turn that on.

This needs to stay off.

To the speaker, I'm sorry.

We are having a little bit of difficulty hearing you.

We are working it out.

Is this on?

I feel like everything's all set up correct.

Yeah, I don't know why it's not.

Apologies, speaker.

We're having a technical difficulty.

No, this thing, let's see.

Do you need to have DS clerk?

No.

Apologies, remote speaker.

We're not going to be able to have you call in for public comment today because we're having technical issues.

Please do send in your comments to council at seattle.gov.

Really apologize today and look forward to hearing your comments or getting your comments via email if you're able to.

Or you are also welcome to call my office.

Thank you.

Okay.

Are we good?

Yep.

All right, clerk, will the clerk please read today's first agenda item into the record?

Agenda item one, an overview from the Department of Early Learning and Education of the $4.5 million mental health pilot investment.

Thank you, this item has been read into the record.

For this item of business, we're joined this morning by the Department of Education and Early Learning Director, Dwayne Chappelle.

and Department of Education Early Learning staff, who will introduce themselves here in a minute.

Thank you for being here.

I will say, colleagues, that...

Sorry.

This presentation today will be focusing on the $4.5 million mental health pilot investment.

I'm looking forward to hearing how the investments have been implemented so far and how that implementation plan was put into place.

The pilot funded from both the Families Education Preschool and Promise Levy and the general fund is currently at seven public schools.

It was prompted initially by concerns over the pandemic's effect on children's mental health and then expanded in scope after their shootings at Ingram and Garfield High School.

Today's presentation will show what planning and research went into creating this pilot program, what we've learned so far from the pilot, and how we can track results.

I'd like to thank you, Director Chappell, and your team for being here today.

Please do introduce yourselves for the record and you can begin your presentation.

Okay, we'll do.

So again, good morning council members.

I am Dr. Dwayne Chappelle, the proud director of the Department of Education and Early Learning.

My team and I are excited to be here today.

So, and thank you just for this opportunity to speak with you.

So I'd like for everyone to introduce themselves and I'll start with you.

Dr. Ismael Fajardo, Director of Impact and External Affairs, and I'll pass it off to...

Good morning, everyone.

Chris Alejano, K-12 Post-Secondary Division Director at Deal.

Good morning, everyone.

Great to be here.

I'm Amelia Moore.

I'm the Strategy and Engagement Manager with Deal.

And this Dr. Chris Alejandro, I just want to make sure we acknowledge that he's an amazing, brilliant individual that just received his doctorate from University of Washington.

So just had to acknowledge that.

If we can pull the slide up, I will walk us through.

Clerk, can you please also let the record reflect Council Member Hollingsworth has joined online?

Thank you.

My apologies, it says I'm screen sharing, but it's not showing up on the screen.

for folks viewing apologies.

We're having a number of technical difficulties this morning.

All right.

Okay.

Looks like the presentation's up.

Thank you.

Yes, thank you for being patient with that.

So today, you'll receive an update on Deals Investments in Student Mental Health.

In this presentation, we'll discuss how we're helping to prevent the need for mental health services, as well as support students who are experiencing depression or other concerning symptoms.

You'll also hear about school-based health centers, as well as direct investments in seven schools.

We'll share some promising results from our investments as well as about our more than 30-year partnership with Public Health Seattle King County, which began with the 1990s Families and Education Levy that funded Seattle's first school-based health center at Rainier Beach High School.

We'll also walk you through how we selected the schools we're already running programs in, and we'll explain how we'll be evaluating that model.

These investments are already reducing disciplinary action in schools and giving students a greater sense of understanding of their emotions.

And I trust that at the end of our discussion today, you will feel the same confidence as I do in the intentionality of our investments and also the need for continued investment in mental health services for Seattle's youth across a range of strategies.

Next slide, please.

So the Washington State Healthy Youth Survey is administered in schools statewide every two years to collect data from students about their behaviors that impact their health, safety, and success.

Data shown in this chart is for King County and is looking at the youth that are experiencing depressive feelings.

This mental health indicator shows data from 2010 for both eighth and 10th graders.

As you can see from 2010 to 2021, youth mental health problems increased and were exasperated due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mental health outcomes, however, are improving.

Despite these improvements, one in five youth still experience depressive feelings, and this is something we seek to address.

Good mental health is a protective factor for our young people, and it is a key ingredient in their future success.

As my team shares our work in the mental health investments, our focus for this work was to serve a limited number of schools.

There are schools that demonstrated need that were not served, and that remains an opportunity to address.

Next slide, please.

And what I'll do is pass this over to Dr. Alejano to take us from here.

Yeah, thanks, Dwayne.

So much to start us off by just providing folks a general overview of where we were to where we are now and then where we will be heading into the coming school year as far as our mental health investments go.

So back in November 2021, Council allocated a $500,000 investment to be used in the 2022 budget year to address the impact of COVID on students.

Those funds provided student mental health supports at Aki Kurose Middle School, Rainier Beach High School, Denny International Middle School, and Chief South High School.

Those services at those schools began in January 2023. Now, in November of 2022, around the same time Ingram experienced that deadly shooting, council allocated an additional $4 million to be used in the 2023 and 2024 budget years.

Those funds provided student mental health supports at Ingram High School that started in February of 2023, and then at Garfield in Cleveland that started in January of 2024. The upcoming 24-25 school year will represent the second full year of implementation at Aki, Rainier Beach, Denny, and Chief Sealth, and Ingram, and the first full year for Garfield and Cleveland.

And you'll see sort of underneath sort of the broader timeline some notes of sort of activities and actions that we were taking along the way that we'll speak to a little bit more in future slides.

Thank you, and colleagues, we should also note that when Deal was given this funding, it's a new line of business for Deal, and so they did the work, and you can talk a little bit about the work.

I know you'll talk later a little bit about the work for how to get there, but that explains why the investment started in 23, even though some of this funding came from 21 and 22. Thank you.

Dr. Alihano.

And I want to quickly make mention, because this was really important and kind of builds off of what Dr. Chappelle mentioned earlier in terms of our partnership with Public Health Seattle King County.

We've been arm in arm, elbow to elbow with them all along the way from the very beginning.

knowing that because of our relationship with public health and their responsibility in helping to oversee and coordinate the resources that go to school-based health centers, they were an important partner and expert in the field to help us move these investments along.

So this slide just provides a general budget overview.

I touched a little bit on that in the first slide in terms of the budget amounts and what calendar years those resources were intended to be used.

So you'll see in 2022 that $500,000 allocation and the fund source.

Similarly, you'll see the 2023 and 2024 allocation Combined add up to that four million so that was intended to be spread across those two calendar years to add up to the 4.5 that you see in total and So as the team was working to get the initial mental health investment and pilot launched, we were simultaneously conducting a needs assessment that would help inform which additional schools would be eligible for mental health resources, as well as lay out a general framework that could help guide future investments for student mental health if they were to become available.

This involved...

the landscape of existing research that you can sort of see included reports from public health, Seattle King County, CDC data trends, National Institute of Health, et cetera.

It also involved listening sessions and speaking with students about their experiences in school.

It also involved gathering lessons learned from the learning communities that we convened with pilot schools, principals, school staff, students, and the like, CBO partners that were providing mental health services at the schools to further inform the framework and the needs assessment that we were conducting.

And then finally, and of course, we were doing this all in partnership with our colleagues at Public Health Seattle King County, as well as colleagues at the Seattle Public Schools Central Office that manage their student services and work closely with public health.

Similarly, to ensure that those basic needs and medical needs are being met.

ONE LAST THING.

I BELIEVE THE ASSESSMENT REPORT WAS MADE AVAILABLE TO YOU ALL IN ADVANCE OF THE MEETING, SO I'D CERTAINLY ENCOURAGE YOU, IF YOU WANT TO DIG A LITTLE BIT DEEPER INTO THE CONTENT OF THAT, TO EXPLORE THAT AND CERTAINLY BE HAPPY TO FOLLOW UP AND DISCUSS MORE OF YOUR QUESTIONS REGARDING THAT AT ANOTHER TIME.

SO THIS SLIDE JUST PROVIDES A GENERAL OVERVIEW the investment strategy and sort of the priorities that we had in trying to program these resources.

So one, clearly we're attempting to expand student mental health services in Seattle public schools.

We certainly understood at the time that the impact of COVID had the greatest sort of impact on students of color.

So prioritizing culturally specific and responsive approaches for BIPOC youth was a priority of the department.

And then, of course, we also wanted to make the most of the limited resources at the time by providing a continuum of student supports grounded in research and effective strategies for improving youth mental health.

So you can see the three blue boxes there kind of indicate the mental health supports continuum that we established that ranges from direct clinical care, which includes sort of licensed mental health clinicians and that type of support to mental health screenings and referrals.

That sometimes looks like student and family reentry case management.

The conducting or facilitation of the strengths and difficulties questionnaire or at times there's another screener called SBIRT which stands for screening brief intervention and referral to services.

And then finally on the preventative side, trying to bolster social emotional learning sort of proactively by working with students during the school day to acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions, and achieve personal collective goals are the kinds of preventative programming that we were hoping the resources would support.

This slide provides you all with the goals of the investment.

We wanted to first work on reducing rates of anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress with students.

the school environment.

We also wanted to strengthen mental health protective factors.

We spoke to the social emotional skill development, wanting to make sure students had access to trusted adults and And then finally, we want to mitigate risk factors that we know contribute to poor mental health.

So that's substance use or abuse, isolation and disengagement from school, food and housing insecurity as just examples.

I just want to make another quick note that All of these goals have data available to track baseline and future progress.

And we can look at data by school level trends using data sources, as you see on the slide, healthy youth survey, climate surveys, and SPS attendance data.

This slide here shows a little bit more about the school selection Criteria that we used and which schools again Brought into were brought into the investment work.

So in the first year The $500,000 investment with $500,000 investments they were selected by Aki Chief South Denny Rainier Beach and And Ingram was also included in that first year of the pilot.

The data sources and indicators in the box on the right-hand side were used to identify the schools of greatest need once that additional $4 million investment was identified.

All of the year one pilot schools were identified as high need, and therefore we continued their investment into the second year.

And once we had identified a list of schools and the level of needs that they had, we ran or identified four schools for a priority investment and ran a competitive application process to then select two schools in Cleveland and Garfield to join the pilot in year two.

So this provides us a bit of insight into the implementation model that we use to roll out the resources.

First off, you know, all schools receive information on effective strategies to improve mental health outcomes with our colleagues at Public Health Seattle King County.

And then As we do with all of our investments, schools then center what they were hearing from students and families to fund the strategies that can be most impactful for the school communities that they were serving.

So I wanted to make sure that the students were centered in the decisions and strategies that they were employing.

that we had for the use of funds and that the strategies that they were planning to employ were also aligned with the research and best practices that we saw.

The three boxes in terms of fiscal evaluation planning.

In a lot of ways, our bodies of work that we do in our normal, everyday work, not just in the mental health space, but in other contracts and investments that we oversee.

But in this case, you know, we were conducting quarterly budget and implementation check-ins using our staff who were working with schools, conducting site visits, doing ongoing budget monitoring, We were similarly working with partners and coordinating with them through quarterly convenings with all of the pilot schools.

I mentioned sort of facilitating learning communities with them to make sure that they were sharing best practices, also challenges, so that we can avoid some of those stumbles if those were occurring at any one of the sites.

And then, of course, in terms of evaluation and planning, monitoring reporting plans that were customized to meet the mental health needs at their particular campus.

And then certainly emphasizing in the second or rather the 23-24 school year that the implementation was done with fidelity and at a high quality as well.

So today, we recently just received some data points that we're going to share here in a little bit that talks about sort of the outputs that we've seen in terms of the quantity of program activities and number of students served thus far.

We plan to conduct a two-year evaluation report or have an evaluation report.

that will be ready in July of 2025 once all of the implementation has concluded.

This slide provides you all with just sort of a breakdown of the budget allocation by strategy.

On average, there was about $200,000 to $225,000 allocated to schools annually.

44%, as you can see on the pie graph there, funded direct mental health counseling.

And the balance of that, 56%, supported social-emotional learning and coordination and that preventative activities and strategies that I spoke to earlier.

The next slides are going to just sort of dig into more about the funded strategies that we employed.

And I think this is where I pass it on to my colleague, Amelia Moore.

thank you so much chris i'm excited we're going to dig a little deeper into the three mental health investment strategies that chris discussed and we're going to start with mental health counseling so providing additional access to counseling was a strategy that all seven schools funded you can see in the box on the left what some of these activities include in-person one-on-one counseling group therapy, drug and alcohol counseling.

You can see in the green box that 204 students participated in mental health counseling.

That's for six schools.

Garfield is still finalizing their participation numbers.

So the students served by this strategy at their school are not reflected in this total.

So it's 204 students at six schools for an average of 34 students per school.

While we think this is an impressive number of students served and also an appropriate caseload for providers, we do want to acknowledge that 204 students served is a small number compared to the overall student population at these schools.

And we do need additional resources to continue to expand provider access for our students.

So the students served generally visit a counselor multiple times, often weekly.

Longer term relationships are really necessary for counseling to be effective.

And so school quality monitoring really emphasized retention goals between the student and the counselor.

And many of the service providers were brought to the schools through partnerships with community-based organizations and community mental health agencies.

You can see some of them listed on the slide here.

And this was really powerful because many of these community partners have already established trusting presence and relationships in diverse communities.

And they also bring a unique expertise in providing culturally specific and responsive mental health supports.

And we'll see some of that reflected in the data that we'll look at in a bit.

I wanna point to the quote from the chief self school representative.

I think this really shows the power of bringing these providers directly onto the school campus.

You can see that it allows students to form relationships with them or hear about their services from their friends and peers as well as other trusted adults at the school prior to accessing the counseling themselves.

And like Chief Sealth, multiple schools noted that being able to provide this in-person counseling was important both for expanding student reach as well as combating stigma around mental health services.

We do wanna note that not all students need or want counseling services, which is why including screening and referrals and prevention strategies is really equally important in addressing the full range of our students' mental health needs.

Amelia, do you mind if I ask you, and colleagues, please do ask questions as you go along, and Councilmember Hollingsworth and Maura, I'll be looking to make sure your hands, if they're raised, so I can call on you as well.

Oh, you're here, but you're on here too.

She let the record reflect.

Councilmember Hollingsworth is in person and also online.

Amelia, can you just talk a little bit about, so you said that 200, you acknowledged 204 students compared to the population is not a lot.

On the other hand, not all students need this particular service, but also when you said about expanded services, is that because are you all getting data that there are more students asking for this than you're able to serve?

What's the information to support that we need more in this space?

I don't, just more information.

I don't doubt it.

I just.

Yeah, two different kind of sources.

One is just anecdotal.

We hear it for our school-based health center staff, as well as the partner agencies who are providing it, that they're just not, they don't have enough providers and staffing to provide that support.

The other is the research does show, you know, through SBIRT screenings and other referral systems, that about 10% of youth are displaying Tier 2 or 3 needs, so that are displaying, you know, suicidal ideations, clinical depression, anxiety, that would require this type of clinical support.

And again, we'll get into some spotlight soon, but if we do the math, a lot of the schools that we're serving, we're not hitting that 10% in terms of being able to provide services.

So we know the need is there.

Thank you.

All right, so moving on to the mental health.

Sorry, Amelia, we have one more question.

Council Member Wu.

Hi, thank you for being here for this presentation and for the work that you do.

Quick question, are these mental health services, are they available year round, even during the summertime?

Not for our pilot.

I will say though, the community providers, they are brought onto the school campus, but often they operate out of the school campus.

And so they do, also we'll talk about this in screening and referral.

Oftentimes the school is more of a short term, like maybe eight to 10 counseling sessions.

They'll refer to outpatient and longer term care.

And that will take place over the summer.

It's just not necessarily funded through our pilot.

And then the mayor's $20 million, is this part of the plan or is this something separate?

No, this is the $4.5 million that was given from council to deal from general fund and FEPP and a little bit of PET.

But the $20 million is a separate initiative, a separate body of work.

Council Member Wu, this was the initial monies that were given to deal for this particular service.

So back in 21, the 500K in 22, they were given $4 million.

And this, so equaling the $4.5 million.

And today's presentation is on the implementation of that $4.5 million.

That's what deals we're currently working on.

Does that help?

Yeah, I'm just wondering if since it seems like the mayor's doing something very similar, I wonder if there was much interaction or integrated planning going forward on your findings and how that kind of helped the mayor's plan, perhaps?

In terms of the mayor's...

I would say that he recently made an announcement and it came with a research report from the innovation and performance team.

And part of that report was learning from this pilot to inform that work.

All right, so moving on to mental health screening and referrals.

So this strategy also encompasses coordination and case management as well.

And it really is vital in ensuring that all students are receiving the appropriate level of care, also making sure that we understand student needs and helping to make students and families aware of the services that are available to them.

So you can see here, it was funded at six of the seven schools reaching 312 students and families.

It includes staff who manage outreach, triage, student referrals, and connection to services.

As we just discussed, all students don't want or need counseling services.

So a screening and referral process allows us to triage student mental health needs and pair them accordingly with the appropriate intervention.

It also ensures that students with the greatest need are being connected to clinical services.

Sorry, Council Member Moore has a question.

Can you hear me?

Very, very mildly.

All right.

I'll try to, can you hear me now?

Still very mildly.

Is that any better?

We can hear you very lightly, but if you ask the question, I'll repeat it and then.

Okay, yeah, thank you.

So thank you very much for the presentation.

I'm sorry, I didn't jump in sooner.

I had a question about mental health counseling services.

Sorry.

Yeah, the mental health screening and referrals.

You say they're culturally specific family outreach.

And I'm just wondering how that is being accomplished in the North End, specifically at Ingram.

So that's my first question.

And then my second question is relating to slide nine.

You looked at the SPD crime map data to determine what schools should be Included in the pilot, and I know that Robert.

Eagle, which is a mental school was not included and there are a block from Aurora.

They are exposed to tremendous amount of criminal activity.

In fact, there was a shooting.

Not far, well, there was an encampment just a block up from Robert Eagle and a shooting that occurred there.

And students were having to walk past all of that while it was being cordoned off.

So I'm just curious how they did not get made part of this project and if they can now be made part of the project.

Well, to the first question about outreach specific to the North End, I can't speak broadly to the North End, but I know at Ingram High School specifically, this outreach was done in partnership with the school social worker and a community-based partner named Hollowell who have deep connections in the community.

And so really through, and again, I don't want to spoil anything because we're going to get to Ingram soon.

But they really went through pretty intensive.

They developed a whole protocol where they could identify students who are at greatest need and then leveraged community partnerships to reach out to families to make sure that there was cultural diversity, linguistic diversity, and be able to meet families in schools.

and brought in their understanding of what the resources were that were available to them.

For the Robert Eagle staff question, in the needs assessment and the new school selection, that was only inclusive of high schools.

This was in response to research and evidence that showed that high school students have the greatest need, wanna emphasize greatest need.

We understand that the need is deep across the board.

Initially, we had gone with pairs of feeder schools, which is why we do have Denny and Aki as a middle school presence.

But when we conducted the needs assessment, especially in King County, we see youth between ages 14 and 18 have the highest rates of suicide attempts.

And so we chose to focus on high school.

So they're not reflected in the needs assessment.

so remember more oh great answer your question um uh i do i want to acknowledge that you all worked with um seattle public schools because that these are the schools we're talking about uh and the schools then um you worked with the schools you worked with public health you worked with parents students etc but it's the actual school that's implementing so uh council member moore to your point about how this is being accomplished the culturally specific in the schools it's going through the schools not deal necessarily and then also i will say that this is a real you raise a really great question that i also had and i i talked to deal about which is um i'm not sure how the schools are communicating with the students about this service at the schools.

Because for instance, I have two kids at Ingram And neither of my kids were clear as to this service at the school.

So that's a really great question for the schools.

And it's one that I hope to at some point have with the superintendent of schools when I'm able to have a meeting with him.

So wanted to acknowledge that.

Thank you for that question, Council Member Moore.

I too have the same question.

Go ahead.

Thank you, you can keep going, Amelia.

Great.

So we're moving on from screening and referrals.

Okay, got it.

So now we'll move on to prevention and evidence-based practices really point to prevention efforts as reducing need for intensive mental health counseling and instances of crisis.

You can see here that we classify interventions in the prevention category that help to improve school climate, that promote student belonging, build positive relationships between students and adults through staff and peer training as well as mentorship programs, and that provide social-emotional learning through dedicated time in the school day.

You can see it was funded at five schools with 544 students participating in the prevention services.

The prevention strategy was particularly emphasized at Denny and Aki, our middle school partners, with the intention that this decreases the need for clinical support later in high school.

I wanna point to the quote by the Rainier Beach High School representative, because this also shows that our high school students are also calling for these types of prevention services outside of traditional therapy and emphasize the importance of mentorship and relationships with trusted adults in strengthening protective factors that can mitigate adverse mental health outcomes.

So these three strategies, mental health counseling, screening and referral, and prevention, work together to create an integrative model of mental health care across a school, and we're gonna unpack a little more what that looks like within a school building in the next few slides.

So starting with Aki Kurose, you can see the blue boxes on the left show how Aki used these funds to enhance their counseling supports, specifically for students of color and LGBTQ plus youth.

They also expanded their prevention strategy.

They diversified the range of supports that were available to students through expanded arts, sports, and mentorship programs with Seattle Parks and Rec.

They also partnered with the Goodfoot Arts Collective to address youth violence prevention and building healthy relationships through a social-emotional learning curriculum.

The quote from the Aki representative really emphasizes how the different mental health strategies across the continuum can work together in a school building to build and enhance a cohesive system of supports for students.

And I think the effectiveness of Aki's approach is shown in their data highlights with 66 students or about 9% of total enrolled students engaged in counseling services funded through this pilot.

And as I shared earlier, 9% is in line with what the research shows in terms of students with the greatest need receiving these clinical supports.

Research also shows that reducing stigma and increasing student understanding of mental health is key in promoting, excuse me, promoting positive mental health outcomes in youth.

And 84% of participants who were in the Saturday Academy indicated an increased understanding of mental health as well as an increased sense of belonging after their participation in these workshops.

We can go on to Ingram.

So wanna emphasize that each school community is different.

And I think you can see here on these slides, the different approaches that school leaders took to implement evidence-based interventions that were most responsive to the needs of their own school communities.

Pointing to the quote from the Ingram representative, you can see that Ingram's approach was very targeted.

It focused on developing a protocol to identify students at the greatest risk and then connecting them to clinical services.

These clinical services outlined in the blue boxes included the school social worker identifying and referring students to receive mental health counseling that was provided by CBO partner Hollowell, who then worked closely with the school social worker to develop individual support plans for students.

The school social worker also referred students to receive substance abuse counseling through CBO partner Center for Human Services, who also worked with students and families to connect students to outpatient and long-term care.

Ingram's data highlights show that 48 students engaged in counseling with Hallowell.

94% of those students had multiple sessions, and there was a total of 580 therapy sessions during the school year.

The data highlights also show that although all students may not directly receive these clinical services, they do broadly improve the overall school climate.

This is shown in the positive school climate data, as well as the 33% decrease in disciplinary action.

And Amelia, this is part of my question too, because only 48 students, there are a lot of students at Ingram, and every student at Ingram experienced mental health issues.

In fact, most recently, due to another tragic situation at Garfield, another tragically lost life, those students at Ingram have experienced PTSD.

And so this is something that I have a lot of questions about because...

We know the number of students at this school and we know they don't all need, I'm not suggesting they all need therapy, but there are more students out there.

And so it's important to know the communications that are going out to students to make sure that they're all being offered services because just like at Garfield, all of the students are impacted.

And so everyone needs to be offered services, followed up with, and I'm not clear how this investment is doing that at the school.

Thank you for those comments, Council Member.

We have another slide that we're going to move to.

So yes, thank you for that because there are challenges.

So we'll talk through a few of those.

As part of their reporting, schools also told us about successes and challenges.

So you can see some of the successes here.

Schools reported an increased use of services, specifically for BIPOC students in accessing counseling.

This was credited in part to the added funding for in-person counseling delivered by culturally and linguistically diverse counselors.

And through resourcing and staffing both case management and community engagement and outreach, Schools reported improved mental health awareness, combating stigma.

This was done by boosting capacity to promote mental health opportunity and educating students and families.

Still absolutely want to acknowledge not all students are aware of the services available to them and continued investment in coordination, communication outreach does need to occur so that this awareness continues to increase for our students and families and communities.

Schools also reported improved attendance and school climate resulting from the case manager relationships, as well as the social emotional learning enrichment.

bringing us to some challenges.

Challenges for some schools, there was delayed staffing and hiring of counselors and staff, some lagging contracting processes with CBO partners.

But now that all, as Chris said earlier, all seven schools are entering the next school year with implementation experience, they have approved proposals and implementation plans.

And many of these existing contracts are already in place.

We do anticipate these delays lessening.

But schools also pointed to the challenge of having to pivot in services or experiencing reduced capacity during incidents of violence to be responsive to the emerging needs of their communities during these challenging times.

And that does remain a challenge.

And Deal and our partners are excited for the additional investments that are coming so that we can address these emerging needs and challenges.

To that end, I'm going to pass it to Chris, who's going to talk a little more about our partnership with public health through the school-based health centers and how that intersects with this work.

Yeah, thanks, Amelia.

Yeah, these last few slides will try to help paint sort of the picture of how this mental health investments are being coordinated with existing investments in school-based health centers and provide a little bit of a primer for those members that may not be as familiar with sort of the FEP levy and of investments that support school-based health centers to give you all just a little general snapshot and understanding of what those investments do as well.

So I guess first off, as a department, we really value our role in being stewards of city resources.

So building and braiding both funding and existing partnerships that we have with institutions or community-based organizations are really important to us.

And school-based health centers and working with public health is no different in that respect.

So you should know that all of the seven schools that have been part of this pilot have or house a school-based health center.

And that's really important in terms of the school's ability and the health center's ability to serve as sort of a coordinator and to connect students to either appropriate services that they can receive on campus or when it makes sense to find resources and support off campus.

Similarly, part of the school-based health center charge and what public health tries to do in their daily work through the centers is to provide more culturally specific and responsive healthcare as well as hiring practices in their work.

So again, all very much aligned with what it is that we were doing and trying to implement through our mental health investments.

AGAIN, JUST A GENERAL STRATEGY OVERVIEW OF OUR SCHOOL-BASED HEALTH CENTERS.

YOU CAN FIND EVEN MORE DETAILED INFORMATION IN THE FEP LEVY IMPLEMENTATION AND EVALUATION PLAN IF YOU WANT.

BUT HOPEFULLY, THIS SHOULD GIVE YOU ENOUGH OF A SENSE OF KIND OF WHAT THE SCHOOL-BASED HEALTH CENTER'S CHARGE IS.

They provide comprehensive medical and mental health care services using evidence-based practices.

I mentioned the cultural responsiveness.

Similarly, part of that investment includes resources that support school nurses on campus, school-wide and targeted health education, health information and enrollment support.

There's also dental services that are provided through centers.

And again, I think Dr. Chappelle had mentioned School-based health centers date back to the original education levy in 1990. So again, over the years, we've been able to expand from a very few number to the 29 school-based health centers that exist now in Seattle Public Schools.

There's no income requirement to get an appointment at a school-based health center, and it's accessible during school hours.

THIS PROVIDES EVERYONE JUST A SNAPSHOT OF DATA FROM SCHOOL YEAR 2020-23 AT OUR SCHOOL-BASED HEALTH CENTERS.

SO I MENTIONED THERE ARE 29 SCHOOL-BASED HEALTH CENTERS.

THOSE ARE RUN BY A TOTAL OF SEVEN PROVIDER AGENCIES THAT YOU'LL SEE IN THE NEXT SLIDE, THE SPECIFIC ONES THAT WE WORK WITH OR THAT PUBLIC HEALTH CONTRACTS WITH.

OVER THE COURSE OF THE SCHOOL YEAR, A LITTLE OVER 17,000 mental health care visits were conducted, 14,500 were for mental health care visits, and then, I'm sorry, the 17,000 was medical health care visits, and then the 14,000 was the mental health care visits.

Apologies.

And then also I spoke to the dental services provided, and that figure shows the number of students served there.

HERE ARE THE PROVIDER AGENCY PARTNERS TO YOUR LEFT.

YOU'LL SIMILARLY SEE WHICH SCHOOLS THEY PARTNER WITH OR THAT THEY'RE HOUSED IN ACROSS ELEMENTARY, MIDDLE AND HIGH SCHOOL.

Here's again another snapshot of just the services provided through, mental health services provided through school-based health centers.

You'll see about 1,539 students were served with treatment services, and you can see sort of a description of those kinds of services to the far right of the table.

Similarly, 538 students were served through sort of coordination or preventative measures, addressing basic needs, et cetera.

Similarly, you can see sort of the description of some of those services that were provided as well.

And just by way of looking ahead to the next school year that's approaching, sadly, as far as the mental health investments, the seven pilot schools that we are working with are poised to continue on their work INTO THE 24-25 SCHOOL YEAR.

MANY OF THE EXISTING SERVICES THAT THEY ALREADY HAVE IN PLACE WILL CONTINUE ON INTO NEXT SCHOOL YEAR.

SCHOOLS CONTINUE TO EXPAND STUDENT AND FAMILY OUTREACH AND COORDINATION TO ENSURE AWARENESS OF SERVICES TO YOUR POINT, COUNCIL MEMBER RIVERA.

WE CAN'T JUST TAKE OUR FOOT OFF THE GAS PEDAL AND ASSUME EVERYONE KNOWS THESE RESOURCES AND PROGRAMS ARE AVAILABLE, BUT WE NEED TO MAKE SURE THAT WE'RE WORKING WITH OUR PARTNER SCHOOLS TO CONTINUE TO CREATE THAT AWARENESS FOR ALL STUDENTS.

And then expand implementation and fidelity tracking to include outcome and continuous quality improvement measures.

We spoke to some of the evaluation work that's ahead of us, wanting to continue to look at the data to help inform our decisions moving forward.

And then as far as school-based health centers, we'll continue to be partners with them, lean on their expertise that they can bring to bear on this addressing the mental health needs.

And yeah, really partnered with them to leverage those mental health service options that are available there, including mental health providers and increased resource coordination with students and families.

So I wanted to say thank you.

That is the end of our presentation from our team, and we are more than welcome to pause and take questions or comments.

Terrific, thank you so much.

Thank you for being here and thank you for this presentation on the initial pilot program.

I will say specific to school-based health centers, that's obviously not the pilot portion.

This was just an update.

on a service that DEAL has been administering since the 90s.

And I will say I get the pleasure of and privilege of sitting on the FEPP Families and Education Preschool Promise Levy Oversight Committee that's made up of education professionals, community-based groups, Seattle Public Schools, and DEAL.

And the school-based health centers came up in the context of it is a service that is very utilized in the schools.

They're providing a service that kids would not otherwise have because many of the students that use these services might not ask their parents to take them to a doctor, for instance.

And if you notice, there's a lot of health centers at the high school level.

And so it really is a service that kids can go to on their own And it's really a benefit.

We've heard from parents, students, teachers, and other educators, the benefits of this service.

So I wanted to thank you for continuing to expand on the school-based health centers and also talk about some of the things I've heard in terms of the school-based health centers.

So thank you for that.

Colleagues, Any questions?

Council Member, I don't know if Council Member Wu or Hollingsworth had a question first.

Council Member Hollingsworth.

Thank you, Chair Rivera.

Thank you for this presentation.

It was super, it was really good with the numbers because I love like facts and data just to be able to dive into.

And I'd love to expand on Council Member Rivera's comments.

I had an opportunity to go to one of the school-based health centers at Lowell and with Odessa Brown and that was like absolutely phenomenal how they integrated with the school.

Um, so, you know, and worked directly with the nurse to get referrals and just to see the, um, just to see that, uh, program, um, I was really, really impressed.

I mean, I hadn't been to a school like elementary school in a minute, um, you know, and just like to be able to talk to the teachers and, and, and Lola's in district three and they're great.

Um, and, Shout out to the students there.

They actually lost to the teachers in kickball when I went there that time.

So they were a little sad.

The question I have is regarding, so the total number base of students served, if my math is correct, is around 2,770 on slide 23 from the total combination of mental health and student-based health centers.

Around 2,000.

And of those, that would be, and there's like, I don't know, like what, 50,000 students in the school district, maybe a little less.

And so percentage-wise, I don't know what that is.

My math isn't too well.

But is there a certain percentage where you're like, hey, in the next five to 10 years, we would like to be able to expand to offer these services to you know, 20% of our students or 30 or like a goal that's set to like, hey, this is the amount of the percentage of students that we want to be able to offer these services to.

No, thank you for the question.

As Dr. Alejandro mentioned, we're always looking at data to see where there is deed and figure out ways for us to address it.

Obviously, five years from now is a long time, but that's something that we're going to explore for policy considerations in the future.

Understood.

No, that's good to know.

And then the second question I had is...

and you might not have this because I don't know how long a mental health programming has been within schools.

Um, but you might just have off your expert opinion when we, um, there's been a significant decline in investment in afterschool activities, sports, music, arts, those things.

And you know, that to me is mental health, right?

Um, those, those pieces that stimulate kids.

And if there was like a correlation when those kind of fell off and then, you know, there was more need for mental health services with different counselors.

I know it's a random question.

No, no, it's actually, so I think that's, as Dr. Alejandro mentioned earlier in his presentation, is part of the reason why we have a continuum of services and not just solely focused on direct clinical care.

So the prevention work is an upstream strategy, and the Department of Education that oversees the FEP levy has a lot of that summer learning components to ensure students are engaged throughout the year.

Yeah.

That's also an indicator that schools use during screening referral.

If they see a decrease in participation in school activities, that's an indicator that a student might need, if not necessarily clinical care, maybe some case management, maybe connection to a program

after school that is more relevant to their interests so it is an indicator that schools use too under school got it thank you and council member hollingsworth thank you for the great question i just wanted to add i mean the deal has uh worked so hard on expanding preschool and even child care because you it's it's from birth right that if kids are getting The education and these supports by way of sports and music and arts at a young age, it impacts later in life.

And so we've talked at a different committee meeting.

You've heard about their investments in the preschool and the childcare, but that's why Deal has done a great job.

I'm really also focusing and expanding that via the FEPP levy.

And, you know, it goes to the point that you're making.

And in terms of, you know, I have equal questions in terms of the afterschool programs, but I know also that the city's making some investments there with in parks, the teen nights, arts has an investment in schools because of funding cuts at Seattle Public Schools in the arts space.

Our Office of Arts and Culture has an investment that helps support arts in the schools at Seattle Public Schools.

So that's a great question.

Know that Deal isn't the only partner at the city that's doing work with at Seattle Public Schools and trying to provide supports to

students so wanted to also flag that for you so you know absolutely that that's great a prime example is washington middle school they have an after-school program through seattle parks uh department um and so yeah no absolutely and love the collaboration um with with that and um

Yeah.

And really appreciate the question.

And a question I have, Deal's not gonna be able to answer, but even at Seattle Public Schools, just being a parent, I know that a number of years ago, they started the social emotional learning curriculum at schools where students starting in kindergarten, they would have the mood meter.

And that was all part of social emotional learning.

So these are all things that we know based on research that really helps kids with their social emotional growth and their mental health growth.

And it's all very important.

And I think this latest thing that you're, not latest thing, but this latest investment in mental health is to help provide supports.

And one other thing I wanted to say, because it bears mentioning, is that just like the school-based health centers, students, children in the state of Washington have healthcare.

is provided to all students.

We've prioritized that as a country actually.

But sometimes students don't have access because their parents don't know about it or for various reasons.

Sometimes students self-select to access these services.

So having this at the schools is helpful for those students that might not otherwise feel comfortable or for whatever reason they're not getting that service through their medical you know, professional outside of the school, if you will.

And so it really does provide then access that they can get on their own.

So anyway, wanted to call that out too, because that's a component of this.

Thank you.

All right.

And Council Member Wu.

Yes, thank you.

So I want to at least echo my colleagues in thanking you for your work and well-thought-out response.

I'm seeing here that, you know, Garford High School are working with Urban League.

I think with Chief Self, I see there's Youth Theater, a community teaching artist.

I found that there's, like, Food Arts Collective named, and Alki Karose, and, you know...

with initial services from the Asian Counseling Referral Services.

So this is very well thought out.

And in our communities, in our schools, we always fight that stigma of seeking mental health, of seeking therapy.

But having these services available that targeted towards community in culturally appropriate ways, I think really helps with that.

Just wanted to get your general opinion on, do you find it hard to find social workers, case managers, culturally appropriate groups, and do you find it hard that reaching out to students, trying to get through that stigma, is that an ongoing issue?

Yeah, I would say, Council Member Wu, absolutely, there's a workforce sort of shortage.

I mean, whether that's with mental health and other careers and industries where representation is lacking.

So that continues to persist.

And again, with our work with school-based health centers and working with public health, they have struggled at times to just find mental health clinicians in general, let alone some, you know, clinicians that reflect the population of the students that they're trying to serve.

So that continues to be something that I think we'll take a more systemic sort of like strategy to address beyond just, you know, sort of the 4.5 million or smaller sort of investments like that to really see the difference.

And it would be a longer term sort of strategy as well, because we're It's not going to churn out people for the sake of churning them out.

But it seems to be more of a workforce challenge on that front.

I find it incredible that the mayor has his $20 million plan.

And this program, I feel like it sounds like it's doing very well and is very well thought out and that there isn't more.

drawn out for more collaboration and working together and sharing these funds and the plan going forward.

So I'm kind of interested in possibly exploring how more partnerships could look like between that mayor's office and with you.

because I've been going to community meetings and the mayor's plan includes a lot of telehealth, which is definitely needed based on the lack of service workers.

But at the same time, I'm hearing from students, parents, that person-to-person, that in-person meeting and contact is very important.

So thank you for the work that you do, and I'm excited to see what you will do in the future.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Wu.

And yeah, the mayor has a proposal that's part of that next tranche of money that was given to deal by council post this initial tranche.

And so that's for folks watching, Council Member Wu's talking about the 20 million that got put last year.

toward mental health.

And it's something that the mayor has a proposal that he will be sending down.

At least he's announced part of it.

So looking forward to working with the mayor's office on that.

And just underscoring that there is a shortage of mental health providers in general in the country.

And that has really had an impact, whether it's the school-based investment that the city has done or just in the private sector even.

So that's just a reality and it really has an impact on the ability to expand programs, which is why I think some more folks are looking toward telehealth because there aren't enough providers in the city And so the telehealth component is to be able to provide the service, even though there aren't enough folks in the city to do the work.

So thank you for raising that.

Look forward, like you said, to working with the mayor's office and deal on this next iteration of what the investment will look like.

So council member Moore.

Thank you.

I just wanted to circle back to the answer about the middle schools.

I'm unclear.

When you said that the projects were chosen, I think I misunderstood you.

And you said that you chose high schools and not middle schools.

And yet I noticed you have two middle schools.

So just getting back to the issue, how do we get Robert Eagle added to this pilot list?

So returning to the answer I gave, so initially as kind of Chris laid out the school selection process, we initially had four schools which we specifically selected as feeder pattern schools because we wanted continuity of service between middle school and high school, so that was where Aki Kurose and Rainier Beach, and Denny and Chief Sealth were selected just for that first initial launch, which was the $500,000 investment of one-time funding.

Then when the investment grew, we conducted a needs assessment, knowing that $4 million, while more than $500,000, is still not enough to cover the full district.

Part of that needs assessment surfaced that the greatest need is in high schools, So we made eligibility requirements for high schools only at that time to continue forward in the pilot.

And then as Chris shared, all of the high schools that were already in the pilot met that need, and so we continued forward with them and wanted to allow Denny and Aki to continue the good work that they were doing on the feeder school side.

To your question about Robert Eagle staff, you know, I...

Hopefully, as we are unveiling this new plan and working with mayor's office, services will be available at more schools.

But to this existing pilot, we're kind of entering the last, the final year of the pilot.

And I'll also say that Robert Eagle Staff is one of our school-based investment schools, so they do have resources.

They also have a school-based health center as well.

And on slide, I think this is slide 22, if you go back to it, you'll see that Robert Eagle Staff There are healthcare providers, neighbor care, health.

So, but all of that's being said, council member, we're happy to follow up with you on regarding all of the services that we fund and the support that's happening at Robert Eagle SMAF for that community.

Thank you.

I would appreciate that.

It is a very challenging area that they are at.

I've had parents report that their daughters are being solicited by John's, you know, just the block off there on Aurora, and that their sons are being solicited by the commercial sex workers.

And again, there's an encampment that repeatedly shows up right behind Aurora Commons when somebody was shot.

There's a lot of trauma.

And there's a lot of exposure to crime and social disorder that our young children are experiencing.

And as you well know, the earlier we intervene, the better.

So I do really look forward to having that conversation offline about how we can bring them in to the fold of this incredibly important work that you guys are funding.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member.

Thank you.

And for the record, Council Member Morales is online now.

And Council Member Morales, just want to give you a chance if you had any questions.

Nope.

All right.

Oh, there you are.

Hi.

Did you have a question?

Nope.

Great.

Thank you.

All right.

Colleagues, any final comments?

No?

Well, yes.

Before we close out, can I just, again, thank you all for this opportunity to come and share this great work that's happening.

And I also want to thank my team for all of the work that we've done, that you've done behind the scenes, not only just supporting this school, this investment, but ultimately just getting us prepared for today.

So thank you all for that.

And I also want to thank all of our partners for the work and their partnership in making sure that our young people have what they need in order to be successful.

So thank you all again.

Thank you, Director Chappell and team from DEALD for being here.

I want to, again, I've said it before, I'm going to say it again and acknowledge that You know, any time, having worked at a department I know at the city, any time you are given funding to start an investment that you do not, that is a new investment that you don't do, it takes time to do the research and work with the experts to make sure that you're designing a program for that investment that's gonna be the best program it can be.

And that takes time because you have to work with The various folks involved and so I just want to acknowledge that when this money was given to deal they went out to do that work Which took some time we know that the majority of that investment started early this year And we will see as we get going You know how well that investment is doing in the schools You can see in the appendix which was not mentioned that that the plans for the investment in each of the schools, those seven schools, is in the appendix.

If you want to look at each particular school's plan, as Director Chappell noted earlier and his team, every school, it looks slightly different because it's based on the needs that they've heard from the students at that school.

And so I'm looking forward to hearing more on how this investment is going and then look forward, like I said earlier, to hearing from the mayor's office on their initial $2 million for telehealth and other things that he's planning as we get moving.

So thank you, Deal, for being here.

And thanks for all the work around this important topic.

Okay.

Thank you.

All right.

Colleagues, if there are no questions, any other business?

All right.

Then seeing no further questions, this concludes the July 11th, 2024 meeting of the education, excuse me, Libraries Education and Neighborhoods Committee.

Our next committee meeting is scheduled for Thursday, July 25th, 2024 at 9.30 a.m.

If there's no further business, this meeting is adjourned.

Hearing no further business, it's 10.53 and this meeting is adjourned.

All right, thank you.

Bye.