Los Angeles County Supervisors are raising concerns about what they’re calling an “insufficiency” of mental health funding for students as provided by California’s Mental Health Student Services Act.

The MHSSA, passed in 2019, established a statewide grant program allowing county mental health departments to partner with local schools to create campus-based mental health services with the goal of reaching and treating students before their mental health issues become debilitating.

On Dec. 12, California’s Mental Health Services Oversight and Accountability Commission announced $75 million in grant funds would be made available for counties under the MHSSA over a four-year period on the basis of population size – small, medium, or large.

The minimum population size required to qualify a county as “large” was set at 750,000 individuals, and the maximum grant funding available to each large county, including L.A. County, is limited to $6 million per county over four years.

“When you do the math, you realize L.A. County is only being offered $1 per student per year to meet the mental health needs of a large and diverse student body with everything from campus counselors to suicide prevention training for teachers,” said Supervisor Janice Hahn. “That is absolutely not enough.  We have more than three times the students than the next largest county in California and our funding allocation needs to reflect that difference.”

On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors passed a motion authored by Hahn and co-authored by Supervisor Kathryn Barger to send a letter to state leaders expressing concerns about the MHSSA funding allocation on behalf of the board.

“We must continue to advocate for the mental health needs of the most vulnerable, and often under-represented among us, and that is our youth,” said Barger. “Mental health needs have been recognized as a key component of childhood development and additional funding from the State of California will be critical to best serve the youth throughout Los Angeles County.”

Medical professionals specializing in the protection and promotion of mental health in the Los Angeles area echoed the supervisors’ concerns, noting that grants that only support one-off programs would actually increase the burden on administration, according to officials.

“Aside from the fact that $75 million is wholly inadequate to even dent the ongoing mental health needs in our schools across the state, it is truly unfathomable that Los Angeles County is only permitted to apply for $6 million as a ‘large’ county,” said Dr. Johnathan Sherin, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health. “We are a massive county with massive needs that must be met with requisite resource to have real impact. Further, a grant such as this one which compels a one-off program will ultimately create administrative burdens to deliver proper design, development, implementation, data collection and analysis. And whether it comes in the form of hiring, contracting, training, licensing or some other type of infrastructural demand, these associated departmental burdens are likely to outweigh the added value brought about by the resource itself because they pull staff capacity that is desperately needed for other projects.”

Los Angeles County is home to 80 school districts, approximately 2,200 schools, and 1.5 million students. A $1.5 million annual allocation breaks down to $18,750 per district, $682 per school, and $1 per student. The L.A. County Department of Mental Health alone has already invested roughly $100 million annually in schools through their legal entity network and partnerships across districts, according to officials.

“I continually hear from school district leaders across the county that addressing students’ mental health issues is their greatest challenge to creating productive learning environments,” said Debra Duardo, L.A. County superintendent of schools. “We’re making progress with our Mental Health Department partners to provide needed resources, but it is truly disappointing to see a cap of $6 million from the state for our 80 districts serving 1.5 million youth – 70 percent of whom are socioeconomically disadvantaged. We will be fighting for our students’ fair share of this critical funding.”

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