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.
