Districts seeking to establish a baseline understanding of current mental health operations, policies, and readiness levels.

• Need for defined protocols for parental consent and notification procedures.
• Uncertainty regarding current mental health budget allocation and efficiency.
• Lack of clearly established staff responsibilities for screening and follow-up.
• Need for a centralized repository for policy documentation and operational plans.
• Opportunity to build staff confidence in managing student mental health needs.

Districts currently screening but failing to identify internalizing issues or manage case data effectively.

• Over-reliance on behavioral screening, which misses silent or internalized risks.
• Student data is fragmented across various systems, making comprehensive case view difficult.
• Absence of an automated system for linking screening results to intervention tiers.
• Delays in communication between identifying a need and notifying parents/intervention staff.
• Need to integrate evidence-based, clinical screeners (e.g., PHQ-9) into the workflow.

Identified students face obstacles accessing in-person or teletherapy due to resource or location challenges.

• Significant staff vacancies among school-based mental health professionals.
• Geographical barriers in rural areas limiting access to specialized private practices.
• Student waiting lists are extensive for community-based mental health services.
• Need for increased capacity to provide culturally and linguistically diverse therapists.
• Requirement for a secure, HIPAA/FERPA compliant method for delivering remote therapy.

Therapy is delivered, but districts lack tools to quantify efficacy and demonstrate student improvement.

• Absence of a standardized method to track student symptom reduction post-intervention.
• Inability to correlate mental health interventions with key academic indicators (GPA, attendance).
• Challenges in generating required reports for state and federal accountability standards.
• Need for transparent data visualization to communicate program impact to stakeholders.
• Treatment modification relies primarily on individual observation rather than empirical outcome data.

Districts need robust data to justify current fund utilization (e.g., Medicaid, ESSER) and secure future grant funding.

• Difficulty in tracking services provided for maximizing Medicaid reimbursement potential.
• Need for metrics that clearly demonstrate the success of ESSER-funded mental health initiatives.
• Inconsistent documentation processes hindering full federal funding compliance.
• Requirement to quantify the cost-benefit relationship of prevention programs, such as reduced dropout rates.
• Lack of formal systems for documenting the return on investment (ROI) of mental health efforts.