The COVID-19 shutdowns upended American society—especially for kids, who had to deal with massive changes and isolation when they were suddenly stuck at home, and not allowed to go in-person to school for months on end.
But there was at least one positive: They did not need to worry about school shootings.
Since schools reopened, at least two of the valley’s three school districts have been working to offer better in-school medical and psychological support to students and family members experiencing mental-health and behavioral-health challenges. At both the Desert Sands Unified School District (DSUSD) and the Palm Springs Unified School District (PSUSD), teams of professionals are now in place to address those important needs of the communities they serve.
(The Independent reached out to a representative of the Coachella Valley Unified School District via phone and email, but received no response as of this story’s publication.)
On Sept. 10, national news headlines focused on two school shootings—primarily the murder of Charlie Kirk during an event at Utah Valley University, and secondarily a shooting that left two students seriously injured, and the shooter dead, at Evergreen High School in Colorado. According to CNN, as of that date, there had been at least 47 school shootings in the U.S.—24 on college campuses, and 23 on K-12 campuses—that had killed 19 people, and injured at least 77.
That same evening, online posts threatened shootings at local schools; three Desert Hot Springs campuses were specifically mentioned as potential targets. (In the days that followed, police said they’d identified a juvenile as a suspect, after determining the threats were not credible.)
“I do know that (instances of school violence) always heighten our anxiety,” said Danielle Esquivel, director of mental health at PSUSD, which includes the schools in Desert Hot Springs. “It heightens our awareness of the things that are going on around us. … If a student has some prior history of trauma, or there is a trauma (that triggers) chronic stressors that we often experience in communities, incidents like this tend to heighten the awareness of those dangers, at the very least.”
Thankfully, emotional and psychological support are now available to both PSUSD and DSUSD students when school-related violence or threats occur.
“We always have crisis-response protocols that are a part of our teams’ presence on PSUSD campuses, whether it is to respond to a particular incident or something that’s more of a global kind of thing,” Esquivel said. “As our first line of intervention, a number of our campuses have wellness centers that are available during the school day for students to just drop in to. Those centers tend to be where we centralize our crisis response on campuses. … We’ll add extra staff if there’s a particular campus that needs more support. … That’s available for students, even on just a regular day, but certainly when we have heightened incidents on campus.
“Quite often, we have groups that are available for students to address that particular issue so they don’t feel quite so alone. They understand that their peers are experiencing the same kind of thing, and they can share with one another.”
While the COVID-19 shutdowns highlighted a need for mental-health resources at schools, Esquivel said the need was there well before March 2020.
“The pandemic was definitely a turning point,” Esquivel said, “but I always like to remind, especially families and parents, that adolescent mental health was on its way to a crisis before the pandemic. … The pandemic just accelerated that. The numbers were already showing that it was happening. And then our schools shut down, and it accelerated.”
Laura Fisher is the assistant superintendent of student support services for the Desert Sands Unified School District. She said a grant from the Desert Healthcare District helped the district bolster its mental- and behavioral-health programs for students.
“When DSUSD had the opportunity to apply for a grant (in 2022) from the Desert Healthcare District, we were really looking at … post-pandemic areas where we needed additional assistance,” Fisher said. “What we found, and we’re still seeing it, was a need for additional support in the behavior realm, particularly with our younger students. We saw that, in addition to our amazing school-based mental-health team, we needed more on the medical end, which is why we came to request funding for a board certified behavioral analyst, which we’ve had before. They can be pretty costly, so we hadn’t had that position here for a while, but we thought we’d go ahead and see if we could fund that.”
The 2022 DHCD grant of roughly $296,000 provided the initial funds for DSUSD to hire that aforementioned board certified behavioral analyst. It also allowed the district to hire a mental-health nurse specifically to help students—receiving outpatient or inpatient mental-health or behavioral-health care—to reintegrate into school when ready,
“Certainly, (the new hires) were very successful, and we found the continued funding so that we still have these two positions in the district with permanent funding,” Fisher said. “But the DHCD grant really helped us get it started.”
The improvements in both the quantity and quality of engagements between students and mental health/behavioral specialists are evident in statistics provided by both the DSUSD and the PSUSD.
Desert Sands Unified manages 34 school campuses—19 elementary schools, seven middle schools, seven high schools and one alternative school. Since 2022, in addition to preventative drug-use/abuse education that reached more than 22,000 students, the school mental-health nurse provided 160 students with direct medication management services, and 177students with post-psychiatric case-management services. The behavioral health analyst has met with a total of 144students and school-site teams, and provided training for families of students in special education on behavioral interventions that could be used to support them at home.
Over at PSUSD—which includes 16 elementary schools, five middle schools, four high schools, and two continuation high schools, for a total of 27 campuses—Esquivel had a positive story to tell as well.
“In 2021, when we were just coming back and schools were reopening, I believe we had nine therapists on staff here,” Esquivel said. “We now have 22 therapists. That’s been one of our biggest leaps. That gives you a picture of (how) the need has grown: We have literally more than doubled in size with just our licensed therapist staff … who work with students doing one-on-one sessions, doing family sessions (and providing) intensive therapy services.
“We’ve also recognized that mental health isn’t really a one-size-fits-all kind of need. Not every student needs an hour of therapy with a therapist every week … so we’ve opened a number of wellness centers on campus, and those are available to any student during school hours. Also, we’ve added certified wellness coaches, which is a new certification in the state of California. Those are staff members who are able to do some of the more universal kind of mental-health interventions. They’re able to do psychoeducation and help students with coping skills. … They’re able to help provide students (with) a less-intimidating foot in the door to mental health services.”
As for the statistics: “Prior to 2023 and (our) involvement with multiple mental health grants, we were able to support only 400 students annually of our 20,160 students,” Esquivel said. “Only those with Medi-Cal insurance could be served, and that was just 2% of our (total student) population. Today, over 11,162 students have received services thanks to our expanded programs and services. Now any student, on any campus, can receive services regardless of their insurance at no cost to families.”
PSUSD did not participate in the 2022 DHCD grant opportunity; their support has been funded primarily through partnerships with Riverside University Health for Medi-Cal funding, along with grants from Medi-Cal managed-care companies such as IEHP (Inland Empire Health Plan) and Molina Healthcare.
More help may be coming: The Desert Healthcare District recently issued a new request for proposals—directed at non-profits and other organizations focused on mental health and behavioral support for students and families—to claim a piece of a newly established $1 million fund.
“We’re always working very hard on blending different sources of funding to be able to maintain everything that we are providing for our students,” Esquivel said.