The Hawaii State Department of Education was recently awarded $12.7 million in federal grants to be spent over the next five years promoting safety and addressing mental health issues of youth at Oahu and Big Island public schools. ADVERTISING The
The Hawaii State Department of Education was recently awarded $12.7 million in federal grants to be spent over the next five years promoting safety and addressing mental health issues of youth at Oahu and Big Island public schools.
The department will receive annually $1.9 million in Project AWARE (Advancing Wellness and Resilience in Education) and $608,901 in School Climate Transformation grants that it says help increase awareness of mental health, enhance early intervention systems, and connect children and families with services. The grants are part of the White House’s “Now is the Time” initiative to keep schools safer and increase access to mental health programs.
The funding will benefit more than 30,000 public school students on the two islands, according to the department. The funding will be divvied up between students in the Big Island’s Kaʻu-Keaau-Pahoa complex area and Oahu’s Nanakuli-Waianae and Leilehua-Mililani-Waialua areas.
Each complex area will be provided a School Climate Program coordinator, while each complex within the area will receive one licensed social worker who will be located at a high school, according to the state. The grants will also fund as many as 80 substitute teachers per year per complex area to allow teachers to attend Youth Mental Health First Aid, which trains educators to detect mental health concerns and use interventions and social-emotional learning strategy.
While the budget has not been finalized, an estimated $500,000 (combined from both grants) a year will be dedicated to the Big Island complex for personnel, consultants, training in Youth Mental Health First Aid and positive school climate strategies, social, emotional learning curriculum, substitute teachers, evaluation and related operational costs, according to the department.
The complex areas are considered high-needs, with the Nanakuli-Waianae (Oahu) and Kaʻu-Keaau-Pahoa (Big Island) complex areas serving large populations of Native Hawaiians, Pacific islanders and disadvantage students, and Leilehua-Mililani-Waialua complex area enrolling the greatest number of military-dependents in Hawaii.
Staff will receive training and assistance in evidence-based mental health interventions, case management, data collection and analysis, anti-bullying initiatives, and strategies to engage families and augment community resources, according to the state department.
The goal is to foster community partnerships and state interagency collaboration as a way to build capacity, integrate and expand improved services statewide across the education, mental health, juvenile justice and law enforcement sectors.
“The social, emotional and behavioral well-being of our students is crucial to ensure they come to school ready to learn and maximize their opportunities,” Superintendent Kathryn Matayoshi said in a prepared statement. “We look forward to building on our systems of support, increasing family outreach and collaborating with partner agencies.”
