Austin ISD outlines multi‑tiered mental‑health initiative and school‑based counseling centers

Austin ISD presented an update on its multi‑tiered mental‑health initiative, describing plans to expand prevention‑focused supports at every campus and to grow school‑based counseling capacity for students with intensive needs.

Twila Williams, executive director of counseling and mental health for Austin ISD, said the district is using a multi‑tiered system of supports that ranges from universal, classroom‑level social‑emotional learning (tier 1) to intensive, licensed mental health services (tier 3). Williams said the initiative aims to train staff to identify early warning signs and to broaden platforms that let staff track attendance, grades and other signals so interventions occur earlier.

“We are looking to train our staff in the next 3 to 5 years for early indicators … before it gets to the point where there's a crisis,” Williams said. She described a counseling and mental health team that includes social‑emotional learning staff, trauma‑informed supports and counseling coordinators.

Doctor Kimberly Wilson, director of crisis management and mental health, explained the role of recently created wellness‑counselor positions that provide short‑term individual or group counseling at campus level. Wilson said those counselors operate at tier 2 and that licensed mental‑health professionals take referrals for the more intensive tier‑3 cases. “When the services are exhausted or the students need a little bit more, then a referral is made to the licensed mental health professional,” she said.

Officials gave several program details: the district identified roughly 172 school counselors and about 17.5 wellness counselors; the presentation said the district has 31 licensed mental‑health professionals assigned to school‑based mental health centers and reported about 94 school mental‑health center locations, of which roughly 52 are shared spaces. Wilson said most care is intended to be short term and that, when appropriate, staff will connect families with longer‑term community providers.

Superintendent Matias Seguerra described a data platform the district plans to use to surface early indicators. He said the goal is to correlate attendance, academic change and other signals to identify students who may otherwise be “invisible” to campus staff until difficulties escalate. The packet also reported short‑term outcome tracking: Williams said the district’s attendance tracker shows program participants were about “2% above the average for the district” in average daily attendance.

Wilson said the district is piloting brief satisfaction and fidelity surveys for students and families as an evaluation approach this year; the surveys are intended to be developmentally appropriate and short. She said the initiative is in early implementation and that the district will continue to report back on outcomes and measurement approaches.

The subcommittee discussed related trends that education staff are seeing, including anxiety, trauma related to family violence, and housing instability. Members emphasized the need for coordination with community partners for legal and housing services when students face eviction or homelessness. No new funding was approved at the meeting; the presentation was informational and intended to inform longer‑term budget planning.