Anchorage School District Comprehensive School Mental Health Systems - Alaska serves as the 49th state, gaining statehood in 1959, and is larger than the three next-largest states combined. The geographical makeup of this state includes many isolated, largely roadless, and rural areas that make accessing needed services a difficult goal to achieve. The Anchorage Municipality serves as the “urban hub” for Alaska with the Anchorage School District (ASD) gaining the title of Alaska’s largest, most urban district, educating 44,325 students over 2,000 square miles with minority students comprising more than 50% of our student population. While Anchorage serves as the “urban hub” for many services in Alaska, residents are often faced with wait times to access services exceeding six months. Specifically, 62.9% of Alaskan youth who had depression in 2021 did not receive behavioral health services. Additionally, Alaska ranks 43rd on the Overall Child Well Being Scale and has the second highest rate of suicide in the country. To address these gaps in services, ASD has partnered with the Alaska Department of Education, Alaska Division of Behavioral Health, Providence, Volunteers of Alaska, Azevedo Consulting, and Alaska Behavioral Health to build a district wide evidence-based comprehensive school mental health system to improve school climate, increase mental health awareness, and reduce violence and suicide rates in our schools. ASD’s Comprehensive School Mental Health Systems Project will serve students in Elementary, Middle, High School, and Alternative settings with an average of 10,778 students served per year of the grant and a total of 44,527 students served over the lifetime of the grant. The first goal of the project is to build system infrastructure and capacity through interagency collaboration to increase quality and sustainability of mental health services for students. ASD will utilize the evidence-based Interconnected Systems Framework (ISF) to develop a comprehensive implementation plan, advisory board, and community needs assessment to achieve this goal. The second goal of this project is to increase the capacity of schools to directly respond to mental health needs of students. ASD will implement universal behavioral health screening using SAEBRS (Social, Academic, Emotional Behavior Risk Screener), embed school-based mental health clinicians who will utilize evidence-based interventions including CBITS and Bounce Back and implement the evidence based Positive Behavior Interventions & Supports (PBIS) across all project schools to achieve this goal. The third goal of this project is to promote wellness and resiliency among students and staff by fostering healthy environments and providing comprehensive prevention (Tier I), early intervention (Tier II) and intensive individualized services (Tier III). ASD will facilitate district wide training for 100% of ASD project staff on PBIS, Youth Mental Health, and ISF to reach this goal. The fourth goal of this project is to ensure effectiveness of program activities through program monitoring and reporting. ASD will accomplish this goal through the universal implementation of Tiered Fidelity Inventory at all project schools.
