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East Stroudsburg staff recommend Cartwheel telehealth contract to expand student mental-health access
Summary
District staff recommended contracting with Cartwheel, a telehealth provider, to expand mental-health services for students; the district would pay an annual oversight/case-management fee while families’ insurance would be billed for treatment; partial funding would come from a PCCD grant.
The EPR Committee of the East Stroudsburg Area School District heard a staff recommendation June 5 to contract with Cartwheel, a telehealth mental-health vendor, to expand access to counseling and psychiatric services for students across the district.
District staff said the contract would include a roughly $65,000 annual fee to cover case management and platform oversight; clinical services would be billed to students’ family insurance plans, and Medicaid would be accepted without co-pays for eligible families. Staff told the committee Cartwheel can serve about 100–150 students under the quote they reviewed, provides family therapy and psychiatric evaluations, and offers staff support for up to 20 district employees.
District presenters said telehealth is intended to reduce long wait lists for local providers, improve access for students covered by New York and New Jersey insurance plans, and provide a family-therapy option that can be hard to find locally. Staff said Cartwheel would offer eight pro bono student sessions as in-kind support and maintain an online portal that the district could use to track referrals and whether families and students are connecting with assigned therapists. Staff also said the platform’s hours are 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Presenters noted the district could cover roughly $38,000–$40,000 of the annual fee from an existing Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency (PCCD) grant; families would be responsible for co-pays and deductibles when insurance is billed, except for Medicaid where staff said co-pays would not apply. Committee members asked how the oversight fee differs from therapy billing and whether the platform would meaningfully shorten wait lists; staff explained the fee covers case-management and referral coordination while clinicians bill insurance for therapy sessions.
No formal vote on a Cartwheel contract was taken at the meeting. Staff said the recommended agreement had been vetted, that a board member who had seen Cartwheel at a conference had provided a referral, and that district staff had consulted school counselors at High School North about on-the-ground needs.
District staff said they would continue work on procedures for family opt-in and referral flows if the committee and board approve next steps.
Ending: The committee did not approve a Cartwheel contract June 5; staff recommended the vendor and identified PCCD funds that could cover part of the oversight fee, and they said they will return with implementation details if the board later approves the contract.
