County Chair Reverses Course on School-Based Mental Health

A proposal in Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson’s budget to eliminate the equivalent of 4.18 full-time school-based mental health providers inspired a mutiny among the other four county commissioners and a wave of outrage from community members (“Mental Distress,” WW, May 14).

Now, Vega Pederson is changing course and on board with preserving the positions she tried to chop.

An amendment by Commissioner Julia Brim-Edwards, which Vega Pederson co-sponsored, proposes saving those four positions with $696,313.

That money will be raised from about $250,000 in revenue generated by the school-based mental health program, which Brim-Edwards says would come from Medicaid. Another $446,313 would come from reducing one new position and contracted services from a permanent sobering and crisis stabilization center “that are not anticipated to be needed this fiscal year,” Brim-Edwards says, because a temporary site is expected to be in operation instead.

School-based mental health operates in six school districts in the county. Therapists work at schools with students who have diagnosable mental health conditions; they also conduct suicide risk screenings and engage in crisis management.

In a statement to WW, Vega Pederson says she’s “proud” to co-sponsor the amendment to further restore clinical services, especially after community members pushed for it. But she reemphasized her desire for the program to become more fiscally sustainable.

“While we seek support from our board to fund these services,” she said, “we must continue our conversations with our partners in this work and use this next year to uncover ways to increase business rigor so that this program is more self-sustaining in times of financial uncertainty while also keeping services available to as many children as possible.”