At Kalispell’s Evergreen School District, connecting students to the resources they need is a priority, Superintendent Laurie Barron told the state’s School Funding Interim Commission last week.
“Ninety-four percent of the students in our district are eligible for free and reduced-price meals,” she said. “Our families have a lot of needs. We provide a lot of wraparound support, and what we found is even with all of the support we were providing, we had so many families unable to access it.”
Barron’s comments came as part of a panel on mental health in Montana’s schools during the commission’s most recent two-day meeting on Feb. 11-12. Several administrators painted the challenge as pervasive and urgent in their presentation to commissioners. Schools across the state and country have tracked an increase in mental health issues among students over the past decade.
The School Funding Interim Commission is in the throes of conducting a once-a-decade study on Montana’s school funding mechanisms. As part of that work, the commission has seen presentations in its meetings about the various needs schools are tasked with meeting for students and families — both academic and non-academic in nature.
Commissioners at the meeting said it wasn’t their job to prescribe the right way to handle those challenges. Still, state Rep. Dave Bedey, R-Hamilton, said acknowledging there’s a requirement for schools to meet the state’s mental health “crisis” — and that meeting it comes with a cost — is important.
“We may not like that these costs exist, but that doesn’t mean that these costs don’t exist,” said Matt Schreiber, another member of the commission.
While most schools in the state (76%) have some form of universal mental health program, and an even higher percentage have protocols for suicide prevention, panelists from Helena, Missoula and Kalispell each described a lack of resources when it comes to dealing with mental health challenges.
Helena student services director Lona Carter said there’s a shortage of therapists to go around. It means school counselors and nurses end up on the front lines of providing mental health support to students. At Lowell Elementary in Missoula, principal Rae Cooper said students as young as second and third graders are struggling with suicidal ideation. While the school has services geared toward mental health, Cooper said it could still use double what’s available based on need alone.
At Evergreen, Barron described an evolving landscape for navigating students’ mental health needs — and one that is largely dependent on grant funding. The district hasn’t passed a bond or levy ask in more than 20 years. It most recently ran a general fund levy in 2019, which voters rejected at the ballot box.
Evergreen used to function as a Comprehensive School and Community Treatment center, a program through the state’s Department of Public Health and Human Services in which a public school district provides a mental health center service. Students admitted to such a program could receive services at school, at home or within the community. The district had 12 providers who served as part of the program, Barron said. But when the program went away, Barron said they had a difficult time finding new providers to continue services.
The district has since shifted to using school-based outpatient therapy. Kelsey Gummer, a senior program officer with the Montana Healthcare Foundation, explained that approach consists of an outside healthcare organization partnering with a school district to implement a service. It’s been around for a long time but is relatively new in Montana. Over 100 schools in the state use school-based healthcare to serve their students.
Evergreen partners with Greater Valley Health Center to provide students with mental health services. The school district also received a Montana Healthcare Foundation grant to bring on a community support liaison, whose job is to connect families to services the district offers. From January 2023 to January 2026, Barron told the commission, that liaison has connected 843 families to 1,899 services. The district has seen tangible improvements in student attendance, behavior and classroom performance for students who’ve connected with services.
But with 93 students already using the school-based outpatient therapy program and another 29 who’ve joined the waitlist, Barron still said more resources are needed.
“This is a crisis for us,” Barron said. “I mean, just the increase: 20 more students need services, are getting services since October. And another 29 are waiting, and that’s just since October.”