May is Mental Health Awareness Month: Learn How the 2020 Mill Levy Override Helped Transform Mental Health Programs at Denver Public Schools

Thanks to the far-reaching success of our 2020 Bond, which primarily consists of capital projects, we are able to provide regular construction updates on all of the wonderful new developments in our district.

Today we celebrate the success of our Mill Levy Override, which also passed in 2020. The Mill Levy Override is focused on improving the ways in which we are able to reach success as a district through increased investment in our personnel and school programs.

In honor of Mental Health Awareness month, we are going to shine a light on the positive outcomes of mental health programs in schools since the Mill Levy Override passed in 2020.

The 2020 voter-approved Mill Levy Override provided DPS with funds that were imperative to our district’s success, funds that were directed toward critical maintenance needs. The subsequent effect being that more general fund revenues were freed-up for use in other areas. Thanks to the Mill Levy Override, additional funds were made available for purposes such as adding and maintaining mental health professionals and school counselors to support students.

The need for increased mental health services was identified early on through a series of stages, made up of a comprehensive collaboration between the following entities: District Leadership, CPAC, and our Board of Education.

The Community Planning and Advisory Committee (CPAC) refers to a group of community members, parents, educators, and other DPS stakeholders. The committee played a vital role in creating the 2020 Bond and Mill Levy package that ultimately ended up being presented to Denver voters. 

CPAC members were chosen by a selection committee with the intention of creating a group of stakeholders that is demographically and regionally representative of the Denver community. 

The members participated in five full CPAC meetings and five subcommittee meetings from January to June of 2020, at which time the committee presented their funding recommendations, inclusive of $3 million dollars allocated toward mental health services, to the Board of Education, who carefully reviewed the recommendations and agreed on mental health services being indicated as a crucial need under the Mill Levy Override Ballot issue.

The ballot initiative passed, and as a result, we were able to provide our district with new and increased mental health services that are already having significant results and are providing our community with much-needed resources. Thank you Denver voters!

We sat down with Amanda Wentz, Manager of Substance Use Prevention and Therapeutic Service Provider Programs for DPS, and Joseph Waldon, Prevention and Therapeutic Specialist for Hill Campus of Arts and Sciences, to discuss the important work they are doing, and how these funds have helped shape the Substance Use Prevention and Therapeutic Service Provider Program into what it is today.

Amanda and her team have served well over 10,000 students annually through prevention education and other social emotional learning initiatives…“Schools are the greatest unleveraged therapeutic milieu we have.”

Since 2015, when the Substance Use Prevention Program began, Amanda and her team have served well over 10,000 students annually through prevention education and other social emotional learning initiatives.

Prior to 2015, there was some targeted substance prevention and therapeutic programming in place, but these supports were contracted out and few and far between. In response, grant dollars generated from marijuana sales tax were routed directly to the Colorado Department of Education, and helped launch the evidence-based Substance Use Prevention Program at DPS.

In May of 2021, Colorado Children’s Hospital declared a state of emergency for pediatric mental health.

Substance use prevention is important for many reasons, and served as a useful launch pad for deeper mental health work in our schools. Now, with school safety being at the forefront of many minds, it is essential to remember that “All prevention is violence prevention,” as Program Manager Amanda Wentz says, “Prevention means less intervention. If we are preventative and proactive we would mitigate so much harm.”

In regards to why the program was titled “Substance Use Prevention” Amanda went on to explain, “‘Substance abuse’ is terminology that we still use when people are struggling with substances more habitually or severely, but substance use and misuse are used more regularly because they’re more neutral terminology- these are behaviors and actions that are typically born of vulnerabilities including untreated mental health conditions- particularly post-traumatic stress.”

Amanda and her team approach mental health through a trauma-informed lens, focusing on identifying the root causes of substance use among teenagers. Prior to the program launch, it was estimated at just one high school that over 90% of students who were using substances self-identified as “self medicating” for symptoms of post traumatic stress.

For students who are actively in addiction, other programs are available.

“All of our substance use programs are focused on prevention and early intervention, but there are programs for students who are actively using and would benefit from direct treatment. Due to the physiological implications of addiction, we lean on community partners for substance abuse treatment. Our primary partner in this work is Denver Health’s STEP program,” Amanda told us.

Another difference between these programs and outside programs is that not only are 100% of the services provided for free, but there are also no students or parents interfacing at all with billing systems, thanks to the Mill Levy Override. This eliminates the weighty barrier to mental health resources that can sometimes exist outside of the school environment.

So, when and where did the Mill Levy Override come into the picture? In 2020 when the ballot passed, pieces of the puzzle began to take shape and a new program began to form: Therapeutic Service Providers. You can read more about the pilot launch of this program here in the executive summary.

The program began in Fall 2021, in the beginning of the 2021-2022 school year. 13 therapeutic service providers were brought on staff. In January 2023, the Mill Levy funded Therapeutic Service Provider Program combined with the Substance Use Prevention Program and School Health Professionals Program, which are grant-funded. Today, following the merge of these two programs, there are approximately 30 full time professionals working in our schools.

Prior to the Mill Levy Override and the Therapeutic Service Provider Pilot launch, the social workers, psychologists, and nurses in our DPS schools had most of their time taken up by special education programming. It is a legal mandate that those services are provided. Part of the appeal of the Therapeutic Service Provider Program being piloted was due to an alarming fact: that a large population of general education children were not able to access mental health services unless it was allocated from an outside agency, due to the demand placed on the aforementioned staff members.

The gap that this Mill Levy Override funding is filling is meeting the general education population’s needs, because a student can be in need but not qualify for receiving special education services.

In the first year of the TSP launch, 200 students received individualized therapy. In the second year, an additional hundred students received small group therapy. The total number of whole class interventions to date has amounted to 1150 students served, with the services provided by the original cohort of 13 total added providers.

“When I’m in district meetings and I explain what I do, educators ask me ‘How do I get one of you at my school?’” At present time, 36 schools have a “Joe”…He makes sopapillas for celebrations at school, he has coached cross country, and he is truly a part of the Hill Campus of Arts & Sciences community.

Tier 1 services, North High School’s Fentanyl Education Night coordinated by Prevention and Therapeutic Specialist Sarah Thomas

Mental health and substance use prevention services fall under three categories: Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3. Tier 1 is universal support, examples of which are: a whole class intervention like delivery of curriculum about safe bodies, vaping, or suicide prevention. Tier 1 is an essential tool for support in delivering some basic psychoeducation and skill building to as many students as possible. Tier 2 is more targeted, with services provided to students who are identified as having elevated needs, usually delivered through small group intervention. Tier 3 generally refers to one-on-one student support.

Joseph Waldon, Prevention and Therapeutic Specialist for HiIl Campus of Arts and Sciences, performs mental health classroom visits with the school social worker. Together, they educate students on how to recognize the signs of anxiety and depression. They also educate the students on suicide prevention and developing positive coping skills.

“We teach them about breathing exercises, and those sorts of things, and for some kids they learn a skill and that ends up being enough for them,” said Joseph. This type of universal support is essential to providing a quality learning environment for all students, they are skills that are useful for all.

“If kids’ mental health needs are being met they are going to be more ready to learn, you can’t learn or focus if you are depressed or anxious, and if kids’ individual needs are being met, individually those kids are going to thrive more in an academic environment,” Joseph, otherwise known as Joe, is passionate about his community and the work he does.

He continued, “Collectively, if a community’s mental health needs are being met, then the community as a whole is stronger and more stable, more positive, in terms of having a school that has students who are skilled at self regulation and self control. The result is that a teacher or a guest teacher is better able to teach in a more manageable and supportive classroom.”

Prevention and Therapeutic Specialist Joseph Waldon leads a Tier 2 group for 8th graders struggling with depression and anxiety

Joe is also integrated into the school community in a way that outside providers could not be. He makes sopapillas for celebrations at school, he has coached cross country, and he is truly a part of the Hill Campus of Arts & Sciences community.

When asked about why mental health is important for quality learning environments, Amanda responded with a question, “How did you learn best? When did you learn best, and when did you learn the most?” After some reflection, the answer was clear as day, and Amanda confirmed, “It is through strong relationships. It is psychological safety that is the baseline for all neurological growth.”

With relationships at the foundation of our provider programs, we are primed for success and positive outcomes.

In May of 2021, Colorado Children’s Hospital declared a state of emergency for pediatric mental health.

There are other outstanding indicators that informed the development of the Prevention and Therapeutic Specialist role, including one study indicating that the amount of students who complete therapeutic programs offered to them in schools is nearly 100%, a significantly higher percentage than those who engage with and complete outpatient programming outside of school sites.

District-wide, DPS uses a universal screener called the BASC-3 Behavioral and Emotional Screening System, commonly referred to as the “BESS.” Prevention and Therapeutic Specialists use BESS results as the primary driver of their caseloads. Joe shared that several of the students he has supported have moved from the “Elevated” or “Extremely Elevated” score ranges when screened in the Fall to the “Normal” range in the Spring, after receiving targeted therapeutic support. Joe also uses other student surveys regularly to inform his work, and names that students are quick to self-identify their struggles. They understand the importance of their mental health.

“We do pre and post measures for students who receive services, whether individual or group curricula. Of our students for whom we had pre and post data measuring post-traumatic stress symptoms, 73% said their symptoms had improved after they received support from the PTS team. For anxiety, 72% of the students reported a reduction in those symptoms. In the areas of depression, self-concept, and anger, roughly 60% of the students reported improvement,” said Amanda, recounting program outcome data from the 2021-2022 school year.

The BESS universal screener is also useful in ensuring that Prevention and Therapeutic Specialist caseloads center equity. Historically, many students identified as needing mental health services are well-resourced with guardians who advocate for them to receive those supports. When school staff members identify students for mental health services, it is often students who present with externalizing behaviors like aggression, being “off-task,” or breaking established school rules or norms. This creates a gap in services for children who are experiencing more internalizing concerns like depression and anxiety. It also prevents students from historically marginalized populations from receiving services, as they are also under-identified. Universal social-emotional screening levels the playing field for these students by giving them the agency to self-report difficulties that might not always be obvious to the adults around them.

Another difference between these programs and outside programs is that not only are 100% of the services provided for free, but there are also no students or parents interfacing at all with billing systems, thanks to the Mill Levy Override. This eliminates the weighty barrier to mental health resources that can sometimes exist outside of the school environment.

It is evident that these programs are providing an essential service to our DPS students and families. What is in store for the future of these programs? That is dependent on a number of factors.

“The Mill Levy generated Therapeutic Service Provider position has now been fully integrated into our previously existing programs. The position is now called Prevention and Therapeutic Specialist. Unfortunately as enrollment decreases, the result can be that our funding allotment for mental health services decreases, but the need for support remains. An educator is often seen as more essential than our mental health specialists, due to the idea that mental health is considered a secondary or optional function of schools. Education is obviously seen as our primary function.

The gap that this Mill Levy Override funding is filling is meeting the general education population’s needs, because a student can be in need but not qualify for receiving special education services.

However, ample data reflects a significant need for increased mental health support systems for youth, and these supports are a vital tool for encouraging supportive learning environments. “We have a good model, it just needs to be sustained. Every year as a department we do a workload calculator, and we know that school social workers and psychologists cannot manage the mental health needs of students not receiving special education or crisis support, on top of their already extremely high workloads. Without Prevention and Therapeutic Specialists providing substance use prevention and therapeutic services to broader school communities, they wouldn’t be offered internally,” said Amanda.

Joe wants a Prevention and Therapeutic Specialist at every school. He is certain the need is there.

“When I’m in district meetings and I explain what I do, educators ask me ‘How do I get one of you at my school?’” At present time, 36 schools have a “Joe”.

“It takes a village right? These programs are an integral part of our village. It makes a difference to integrate therapeutic healing and care into our learning environments. There is research to support that school is where students will access these services and complete them, and that they will actually experience a reduction in symptoms as a result,” said Amanda, and she concluded the interview with a profound statement, “Schools are the greatest unleveraged therapeutic milieu we have.”

Interested in hearing more? Tune into Amanda’s recent interview on our Educa Podcast.