Chandler school officials roll out new mental health plans

When Brenda Vargas stepped to a podium at the Feb. 8 Chandler Unified School District Governing Board meeting, she had a single purpose.
According to what she said, also a single motivation.

“One loss of life is too many,” Vargas, CUSD’s director of counseling and social services, said, with a break in her voice. “My team and I, over the past five years, have had some really tough conversations. This topic has a lot of stigma, still. It’s hard to talk about. But we need to talk about it. This is very near and dear to the whole team.”

Vargas led a multi-staff member presentation about a handful of different initiatives the district has started or augmented this year in response to what some students, parents and others have called a mental health crisis in the district.

The presentation took up more than the one hour set aside for the study session. While some of the public speakers at the regular meeting that followed the study session didn’t seem impressed, the counseling and social service team seemed enthusiastic about the hope and possibilities entailed in one program in particular.

The Hope Institute of the Chandler Unified School District, according to Vargas, is an intensive program meant to aid students experiencing suicidal thoughts or ideation. It will be located at the Perry House, located off of the student parking area at Perry High School in Gilbert.

An opening date has not been established, as construction and remodeling details are still being worked out. Vargas said it is largely replicating The Hope Institute’s model from Perrysburg, in northern Ohio, though the Chandler model will reportedly end up being one-of-a-kind in the U.S.

“We hope this becomes a model for the entire state to follow,” Vargas said. “The institute will have dedicated offices and entrances devoted to protecting CUSD student and family safety and privacy,” Vargas said.

The evidence-based therapy program for students will involve a 5.2 week intensive program. It’s not clear yet exactly how transportation to and from Perry High School will function for students from any of the district’s other 46 campuses.

“It is a bit of a leap of faith,” Vargas acknowledged. “Emergency rooms and intensive programs have long wait times and are not long-term solutions.”

Vargas said 395 students were assessed as having suicidal thoughts district-wide from July to the end of the fall semester.

“That’s 395 lives,” Vargas said. “That’s 395 students who wanted to die. It’s a scary experience for students and families, whether it’s the first time, the fifth or the 10th.”

Craig Gilbert, the district’s associate superintendent for pre-K-12 educational services, said the design phase of the center is completed. Last fall, the board awarded a competitive contract to The Hope Institute, choosing it from among a handful of bidders.

Vargas said the plan is to place a second site for the institute as part of the district’s Care Center, set to be rebuilt as part of the Galveston Elementary School redesign and new construction. That would give the district Hope Institute facilities near both its northern and southeastern reaches of its boundaries.

Another new CUSD program, still under development, is called Teen Mental Health First Aid. It’s a peer-support-based program that teaches students how to best support each other in times of crisis and how to get a responsible adult involved.

This program, designed for district 11th-graders as well as the ICAN program, has had enthusiastic responses from students in a limited proof-of-concept setting. The program’s main rollout is set to happen this spring at Perry High School.

The Arizona State University Toolkit, developed in partnership with ASU, is another peer-to-peer help training program for students. The program is designed to teach students how to listen to one another and how to get an adult involved, targeting clubs and other extra-curricular student organizations for training. It will be rolled out at the district’s Arizona College Prep High School.

Other district mental-health focused programs include SOS, or Signs of Suicide. The educational warning-sign program is administered by the counseling staff to district seventh and 10th graders.

Everfi is a program for eighth-graders designed to teach students about mental illness in general. It also models positive behavior and teaches students coping mechanisms for dealing with mental-health challenges.

HELP, or Help Every Living Person, is a set of lessons taught by school social work staff to CUSD 11th graders about suicide awareness, including signs and prevention.

We’d like to invite our readers to submit their civil comments, pro or con, on this issue. Email AZOpinions@iniusa.org.