Preserving Mental Health Support for Students: A Call to Action

Advocates are making a last-minute plea to Peoria Unified Board President Becky Proudfit to change her position and extend a federal mental health grant.

ASU sophomore Olivia Dalley appears to have it all together. She is scheduled to graduate in three years and excels in her classes at the W.P. Carey School of Business.

Dalley describes her adolescence as a time of wild mood swings, depression, suicidal thoughts, and emergency trips to the hospital. She credits on-campus social workers at her high school for helping her survive.

“For me, they were like my parents when my parents couldn’t be there,” Dalley said.

Those social workers now face an uncertain future after a vote last week at the Peoria Unified School Board meeting.

“It breaks my heart that future kids might not be able to have the same support I had,” Dalley said.

Social worker program began after Parkland shooting

Growing up, Dalley suffered from a hormone imbalance that mimicked bipolar disorder. She attended Ironwood High School in Glendale, where she experienced severe highs and lows. Social workers – available to step up where teachers could not – helped Dalley with everything from testing accommodations to communicating to her parents what happened on a given day. It wasn’t until after Dalley got a proper diagnosis and treatment that she was able to settle in and thrive. On Thursday, Dalley joined two mental health advocates in making a public plea to the Peoria Unified School District board to preserve a team of social workers whose future is uncertain.

“The ripple effect of losing these social workers is not going to be pretty,” Dalley said.

As 12News recently reported, PUSD board members Heather Rooks and Becky Proudfit voted “no” last Thursday on a proposal to extend a mental health grant that supports three social work supervisors and 14 interns. The program complimented 30 full-time social workers and counselors in a district of 44 schools, and served 1,800 students, with parent permission, last year alone.

On Thursday, a district spokesperson told 12News it is now scrambling to find a short-term fix that keeps the social workers and interns in place for at least this semester. The district is also waiting on whether another federal grant will be rewarded by September 30th.

“It was shortly after the horrific shooting in Parkland, Florida when the superintendent said ‘Not on my watch. We need to create something’,” said Kathleen Leonard, who founded the program in 2018. “It came out of an intense need to make sure students felt safe. That they felt emotionally, mentally, and physically safe on campus.”

Leonard utilized a federal school mental health grant created during the Trump administration in 2019. That detail matters because in recent years many Trump supporters – and the former president himself – have used on-campus mental health programs including “social and emotional learning” instruction as a political target.

‘As a conservative… I believe social and emotional learning is important’

Proudfit and Rooks are Republicans. Rooks told 12News she opposes mental health counselors on school campuses and she said the grant has “too many strings attached.”

Brandi Jordan, Executive Director of the nonprofit Rise Up Glendale, said she worries politics is distorting reality.

“As a conservative parent who highly respects parental rights, who thinks parents should be involved in every aspect of their kids’ life, social and emotional learning is important,” Jordan said. “Our kids have so many needs. Their social and emotional needs are a part of that.”

Proudfit told 12News on Thursday that she upholds the “important work done by social workers” and would like to see a “comprehensive plan.”

“I have been working with the district since the Thursday vote to ensure there is not disruption to our students and that we have a plan moving forward,” Proudfit said.

Some of these relationships have taken years to develop

PUSD was one of only 27 districts in the nation awarded the grant back in 2019

“Through this grant we were able to build this program ten-fold,” Leonard said. “We not only served students with programs like teaching emotional regulation skills, but we trained schools, trained teachers, did professional development.”

The district reports these grant-funded social workers support students’ needs from homelessness, grief counseling, teaching “youth development” skills and foster care support.

If a student dies, it’s the social workers who set up grief support services. If a student is caught with drugs, it’s a social worker who connects the student’s family with substance abuse nonprofits.

“The three field instructors do their due diligence in finding experts and resources in the community, at no charge to the district, to support parents,” said Jordan. “Some of these relationships have taken years to develop.”

Advocates say they were ‘blindsided’ by Proudfit’s vote

The multi-year grant was scheduled to end on Sept. 30. But the district sought and received an extension from the federal government to spend the remaining $275,000 on the program this school year. The only steps remaining were to get a board vote and renew the social workers’ contracts.

In May, Proudfit indicated she was a “yes” vote after she praised social workers and voted to begin the process of seeking an extension. Social workers told 12News that while they knew Rooks would likely not support the extension, they expected Proudfit to align herself with the two other board members and vote “yes”. Last Thursday, Proudfit’s vote blindsided many observers.

“It definitely took me off-guard,” said Jordan. “To turn around and basically throw away $250,000, and then for her to simultaneously ask the community to pass a bond in the next election for more funds, it just doesn’t make sense to me.”

Because the five-member board had an empty seat, the 2-2 tie meant the extension failed. Proudfit told 12News she supports social workers but does not believe temporary grants are the solution.

“If we’re saying social workers are essential then we’ve got to be building them into our M & O (long term) budget. We can’t just be relying on grants,” Proudfit said, comparing an extension of the grant to “kicking the can down the road.”

Absent that grant, however, there is no solution beginning Oct. 1.

“I would say hallelujah to her desire for a permanent solution,” Leonard said. “But the reality is Arizona is 49th or 50th in funding per student. When will that solution come? You want to leverage every piece of funding that you have and then hope eventually you get more funding through the Arizona Department of Education.”

Dalley hopes board members reconsider

Dalley said she hopes Proudfit and Rooks will find a way to restore the grant and reconsider their positions on mental health and federal grants.

She also hopes they consider her generation’s unique mental health challenges.

“I would respectfully say that they have no idea what these kids are going through right now,” Dalley said. “You’re taking away the support those kids need to even have a future. The ripple effects of losing this grant, losing these social workers, it is not going to be pretty.”

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