Chandler school board OKs new behavioral health provider
Independent Newsmedia file/Jason W. Brooks
Chandler Unified District Director of Counseling Natasha Davis speaks at a CUSD Governing Board meeting earlier this year. The board unanimously approved a lease May 6 with a new local agency that will take over both the facilities and the mental health crisis services provided by the recently closed Hope Institute.
A somber August 2023 commemoration acknowledged the opening of a fairly unique facility: a clinic devoted to preventing suicide and resolving mental health crises, on the campus of a public high school.
That was the ribbon-cutting for the Hope Institute, set up in some spare house-like buildings on Chandler Unified District land adjacent to the Perry High School campus in Gilbert. While the institute and its staff, by all accounts, did well in their missions, seeing 500-plus students and probably saving lives over the past two and a half years, that came to an abrupt halt when it closed April 30.
The CUSD Governing Board unanimously approved a five-year lease for a new behavioral health services provider at its May 6 meeting. That lease is with the Cranes for Change Corp.
Kurt Rohrs and other CUSD board members asked Natasha Davis, the district’s counseling director, and Cranes for Change director Kelsey Phillips questions about how some 60 students will transition from Hope Institute services to the current provider.
“The Hope Institute did take in clients from all over the state, with full priority for CUSD students,” Davis explained. “And that will be the same with Cranes for Change. We’ve done all we can to provide a very warm handoff to them and are confident that between Cranes and other services like Mind 24-7, we’ll have crisis care in May, which is a very stressful time of year for many students.”
Board Vice President Barb Mozdzen grilled Phillips on whether Cranes clinicians are trained not only to assess a student’s risk for harm on-site, but also work with students who have been recently hospitalized as the result of a crisis.
“We’ve had students who were discharged from acute care and still went on to die by suicide,” Mozdzen lamented.
Phillips explained all her clinicians are trained in assessing risk for harm to oneself or others in all interactions. And when it comes to post-acute follow-up care, she said, Cranes has staff who specialize in therapy with a broad range of specialties.
“When a parent or someone tells us a young person is coming out of acute care to us, that gives us the chance to set them up with the best fit with, say, someone who specializes in obsessive compulsive disorder treatment,” Phillips explained.
Cranes for Change states, on its website, cranesforchange.org, that the new site in the building at Perry High will be called The Next Steps Center.
Unlike the arrangement with The Hope Institute, in which no students were billed and the school district heavily subsidized the services, Cranes for Change is paying CUSD to lease space. It states on its site that it “accepts all major insurances including AHCCCS plans.”
The building is isolated against Queen Creek Road, near Perry High School’s swimming pool, away from most of the campus. It was remodeled in 2023 for The Hope Institute to use, primarily for crisis mental health services.
In an April 29 letter posted to the CUSD’s website, Derek Lee, founder and CEO of the Institute, announced The Hope Institute’s CUSD clinic would be closing the following day, citing “a number of factors, primarily related to financial feasibility.”
Cranes for Change states it’s a non-profit organization that provides behavioral health services, including comprehensive clinical assessments, risk evaluations, as well as therapeutic individual and group counseling sessions.
The lease runs from May 7 of this year through June 30, 2031, for $1,500 per month, with Cranes for Change having the option of a two-year extension.
Superintendent Frank Narducci pointed out that Phillips is a Chandler High School alumna.
Jason W. Brooks News Editor | Chandler Independent
Jason W. Brooks joined Independent Newsmedia, Inc., USA, in July 2021 as an associate editor. After a year covering Buckeye, he has covered Chandler since the fall of 2022, in addition to assisting the Daily Independent throughout his time at INI.
Education: University of New Mexico, bachelor of arts in journalism and mass communication, print emphasis, English minor.
Random Fact: He and his siblings witnessed a Space Shuttle launch and landing in the same year in person, on opposite coasts.
Hobbies: Karaoke, bicycling and American Sign Language.
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