Hamilton County school board rejects mental health center contract

The Hamilton County Board of Education declined to renew a longstanding contract with a community mental health center to provide school-based services for students.

Centerstone Community Mental Health Centers has partnered with Hamilton County Schools to provide school-based counselors for the past decade. Schools refer students and families to Centerstone, which only provides services if given parental consent.

This past school year, the nonprofit’s counselors served over 2,600 Hamilton County students in 32 schools, Regional Vice President Daniel Mansfield told the board Thursday.

The Hamilton County school board rejected the agreement 6-5. School board members Jackie Anderston-Thomas, D-Chattanooga; Jill Black, D-Chattanooga; Ben Connor, D-Chattanooga; Felice Hadden, R-Ooltewah; and Karitsa Jones, D-Chattanooga, voted in favor of the contract.

The memorandum of understanding would have given Centerstone counselors access to school campuses to provide mental health services for students with emotional and behavioral challenges. It had no cost for the school system.

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Jones said she’d seen the impact Centerstone counselors had on students in the communities she represents.

After a bus crash in 2016 killed six Woodmore Elementary students and injured 32 others, Jones said she watched children be afraid to take baths because the water felt like shattered glass. If it had not been for the school’s Centerstone therapist and staff, some of those students would not have graduated high school this May, she said.

After an active shooter threat Thursday at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, which also caused several Hamilton County schools to be placed on secure status, Jones said there will be a child who needs a referral to Centerstone.

“Children are resilient, but it doesn’t mean that they forget their experiences,” she said. “They bounce back from them, but it does not mean that they forget them. And I want this board to know from my standpoint that we should be cognizant of that because but by the grace of God, it’s somebody’s child today and it could be yours or mine tomorrow.”

Board Chair Joe Smith, R-Hixson, questioned what would happen if a student needed mental health services but the district did not have a contract with Centerstone.

In that situation, Superintendent Justin Roberston said the school would contact the family. Some of those families will have the resources to access mental health services for their child, he said, but the district serves a lot of families that don’t have the resources or connections to get this kind of help.

“In my opinion, what we’re doing is creating a hardship for a family to get mental health services for their son or daughter that really doesn’t need to be there,” Robertson said.

Robertson, a former principal and teacher, said he’s been in schools and seen students who needed the support, but the family couldn’t make it work. Centerstone provides an opportunity for students, with consent, to get the services they need, he said.

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School board member Ben Daugherty, R-Signal Mountain, said his hesitation came from having people whose backgrounds, beliefs and ideologies he doesn’t know in schools.

“The idea of putting people that we don’t know, that didn’t go through our hiring system, having an impact on a kid in a very vulnerable time in their life gives me absolute reservation as a parent,” he said.

School board member Jodi Schaffer, R-East Brainerd, said she had fundamental concerns with some things she saw on Centerstone’s website.

“I have an obligation as a marriage and family therapist to treat everyone regardless of their background,” Mansfield said in response. “I will meet them where they are at. Not to push an agenda. Not to push a lifestyle. Not to push decisions about who they may become, but to help them overcome their mental illness, just like a medical provider would do.”

Later on, Smith asked if Mansfield could guarantee that all of Centerstone’s counselors embrace that philosophy.

“How could I possibly guarantee that?” Mansfield said. “I don’t think anyone could guarantee that.”

“I think that’s the point Mrs. Schaffer is making,” Smith responded.

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The agreement with Centerstone, which is reviewed annually, also came under discussion a year ago when three people affiliated with the Hamilton County chapter of Moms for Liberty raised concerns. It passed without issues at the time. Since then, five new members have joined the board.

Harriette Reid, who spoke against the partnership again this year, told board members Thursday that if students need mental health care, that should be the purview of the parent and no one else.

“I think we need to focus like a laser beam on education and not on things that are not the purview of the school because next thing you know what else are you going to bring in to say, ‘Oh well, the parents won’t do it,'” she said. “This is our opportunity to let parents know they need to be a part of their child’s school day, whatever it is that their child is experiencing. They need to be a part of that. So bring the parents in, write them a letter, let them know that their child needs whatever care it is that they need, but get it out of the schools.”

Black said she gets frustrated by the narrative that parents can take care of it. Not everyone can, she said. Some work multiple jobs or don’t have the availability to make it to an appointment during an office’s traditional hours.

In a text after the vote, she said she did not want to hear anyone who voted against the agreement mention mental health if the worst case scenario were to happen in Hamilton County. Other board members during the meeting also raised concerns about the district being blamed for not having resources if something happened.

“The vote tonight made our kids less safe,” Black said in the message. “It made it harder for families to take care of their students’ mental health needs. And it is shameful.”

Contact education reporter Shannon Coan at [email protected] or 423-757-6396.