House Education hears advocates on school mental health; lawmakers told staffing and funding limit services

MONTPELIER, Vt. — Presenters before the Vermont House Education Committee on Jan. 29 urged lawmakers to preserve and strengthen partnerships between public schools and designated mental health agencies — a model they said improves access and quality of K–12 mental health services but is constrained by staffing, licensing and funding shortfalls.

“It's better in partnership,” said Matt Abadank, early childhood and school-based services director at NCSS, speaking to the committee about the Success Beyond 6 Medicaid-funded school-based services model. He told members the program leverages Medicaid and local school dollars to place clinicians and behavior specialists in schools across regions of the state.

Abadank said Success Beyond 6 uses a Medicaid match — about 42.5 percent this year, he said — so schools pay roughly that share in local funds while Medicaid covers the remainder. He said the model supports a range of services in his region, including embedded school clinicians, one-on-one behavior interventionist programs, a PBIS-style consultant role and an independent therapeutic program called SOAR Learning Center.

The program’s local flexibility is a strength, Abadank said, but it also creates uneven capacity across the state. “The state has a high need,” he said, adding…