For the third meeting in a row, Hamilton County school board members opted not to renew a long-standing contract with a community mental health center to provide school-based services for students.
Nashville-based Centerstone Community Mental Health Center had provided counseling in Hamilton County Schools for more than a decade until an August board vote cut the service off immediately. Schools had referred students and families to Centerstone, which provided services if given parental consent. The services, using outside funding sources, came at no cost to the district.
An effort to bring back the center’s services was tabled at September’s school board meeting, and on Thursday night, Republican board members voted to remove an updated agreement with Centerstone from the agenda.
At the start of Thursday’s voting meeting, school board member Jodi Schaffer, R-East Brainerd, said she was moving to pull the item until the district goes through a bid-type process allowing other providers to offer services.
Earlier this month, Hamilton County Schools announced it was seeking requests for proposals from organizations interested in providing school-based student mental health services. The documentation says the district intends to partner with multiple organizations to provide services, allowing parents to choose the option that best meets their needs.
School board member Larry Grohn, R-East Ridge, seconded Schaffer’s motion.
“We’ve had a lot and lots of feedback and lots of discussion on this issue, and we’ve already voted it down twice,” he said. “To see this coming back again is disappointing. It looks like theatrics.”
The school board voted 7-4 to pull the agreement with Centerstone from the agenda. Republican school board members Joe Smith of Hixson; Ben Daugherty of Signal Mountain; Schaffer; Steve Slater of Soddy-Daisy; Grohn; Gary Kuehn of Ooltewah; and Felice Hadden of Ooltewah voted to remove the item.
After the vote total was called, Hamilton County students and others in attendance in support of restoring the agreement with Centerstone stood and walked out of the room.
Hamilton County school board opts for third time not to renew Centerstone contract
The proposed agreement to reinstate the services would have given Centerstone counselors access to school campuses to provide mental health services for students with emotional and behavioral challenges. The services were largely paid for by TennCare and a state mental health grant for uninsured Tennesseans.
This school year, Centerstone was servicing around 1,000 students across 50 district schools with plans to expand into seven more schools, Regional Vice President Dan Mansfield previously said.
School board member Ben Connor, D-Chattanooga, has added a new contract with Centerstone to the agendas of both meetings since the board opted not to renew the original agreement in August. The updated agreement that was pulled from Thursday’s agenda would have required Centerstone to prioritize scheduling sessions during noninstructional time and for parents to approve the classes their child missed.
“We are failing kids today. We were failing kids yesterday, and we’ve been failing kids for two months,” Connor said. “All that I’m asking is to reinstate something that we’ve had in place for a decade until we have a chance to put — I’ll call it better — a better situation. All I’m asking is to care about kids.”
The school board is expected to vote on the mental health provider options from the district’s request for proposals at its Nov. 20 meeting, and members Thursday unanimously approved a review committee to score all the submissions. Centerstone has said it intends to apply.
After the board’s vote, Students Organizing Students, a recently formed advocacy group, held a press conference where 10 students — many of whom had previously addressed the board during public comment — called on the board to reinstate Centerstone. Some shared the remarks they hadn’t been able to deliver in full earlier, while others commented on the board’s vote.
“The seven board members that voted against the renewal of Centerstone are not representing the best interest of students and instead are taking part in a cultural war that has everything to do with adults and their arbitrary beliefs,” said Sophia Berestecky, a Chattanooga High Center for Creative Arts student.
One concern the Republican school board members have raised about Centerstone was related to LGBTQ+ resources posted on the provider’s website, including a comic published by the center titled “Spark Unmasked,” which addressed matters of identity and belonging among LGBTQ+ youth.
Reed Hampton, a senior who chairs the Hamilton County High School Democrats, said students will continue to come back until the board restores mental health services. He was asked to leave the meeting earlier in the evening after his remarks during public comment mentioned Centerstone when the time allocated to students to discuss mental health had already been completed.
Each morning, Hampton said at the press conference, students declare their allegiance to liberty and justice for all as they recite the pledge.
“When you pull our support services, when you are complicit in the deaths of our friends and classmates, where is the liberty and the justice?” Hampton said. “What you have done is cowardly. It is cowardly to not listen to the students who were not old enough to vote for you, but whose lives are affected daily by decisions you make.”
Contact education reporter Shannon Coan at scoan@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6396.