The Portage Community School District plans to create an in-house clinic offering mental health support to students at school.
A new grant will help the district provide a centralized location, quick access and an open door to students who need help finding treatment.
Rural districts face challenges in addressing student mental health because they typically have fewer resources and less access to experts and funding for students, said Steve Goldberg of the WEA Member Benefits Foundation, a charity focused on schools. The WEA Foundation awarded Portage $41,000 to help organize the clinic, train teachers and offer counseling sessions on campus.
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Mental health “is a top priority for us,” said Theresa Stolpa, the head of the Portage school district’s mental health efforts. The Columbia County district serves about 2,100 students from kindergarten through 12th grade.
Students are struggling with mental health challenges daily, Stopla said, and the mental support the school is offering is crucial.
“Every student is worth it, because every life is valuable,” she said. “And we have unfortunately lost some students to suicide, and (even one) is one too many.”
Stolpa said since the COVID-19 pandemic, the district has seen an increase in student mental health needs.
It isn’t the only one. The state Office of Children’s Mental Health‘s most recent annual report found that anxiety, depression and suicidality are increasing.
“Mental health problems now affect the majority of teens in our state,” the report states.
Goldberg, who helps direct the WEA mental health funding, said that since the pandemic, K-12 students statewide have seen periods of chronic depression and 25 percent have a diagnosed mental or behavioral issue.
“But only half of them have received treatment for that issue in the past 12 months,” he said.
There are multiple challenges to providing mental health services in Portage, according to Stolpa, including cost, lack of available resources and travel for students without vehicles.
She said the district is offering counseling sessions now with a local provider — but so far it’s only open to students who have health insurance.
“We really want to be able to expand that, because some parents have insurance, but their deductible is so high that they can’t afford to be able to get that mental health that they need for their student,” Stolpa said. “We’re really trying to take down some of those barriers.”
Stolpa is Portage’s director of student services, and her staff training guides teachers and staff to connect with students’ mental health on a personal level.
“It was very motivating for staff to be able to realize, ‘Oh, it’s a mental health issue, but there are things that we can do in our classroom, things we can do individually with students and things we can do in our school environment that can help change that trajectory,’” Stolpa said.
The WEA Foundation provides grants to urban and rural districts across Wisconsin, and has supported mental health initiatives in 22 districts statewide.
And the Portage district isn’t working in a vacuum.
Once a month, members from all the districts involved in the WEA mental health programs meet to talk about their challenges and the different initiatives underway.
By connecting districts together, the WEA hopes they can work out best practices for helping students, finding local funding and adjusting support to where students need it most.
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