Oklahoma schools were getting more counselors, until federal cuts : NPR

Anna Olson is set to finish her master’s degree in school counseling at the University of Oklahoma next spring. Once that happens, she’ll be able to provide much-needed mental health services.

She says she never would have considered becoming a counselor if it weren’t for a federally funded program that covered all the costs of her education.

“I really didn’t know where I was going with my life prior to hearing about it,” Olson said. “This is exactly the culmination of what I feel like I would be good at.”

Olson said she has been working with students at a local public middle school over the course of her training. Some have been struggling socially; others told her of their suicidal ideation. She said being able to help and support them is what she is meant to be doing.

“I can see the impact of the work that I’ve done with those students,” she said. “And that has been just so fulfilling on so many levels.”

But at the end of December, the federal grant that has been funding her education will likely end – two years earlier than expected.

It was part of broader cuts to school mental health made by the Trump administration earlier this year.

How the federal cuts happened

Olson’s education was paid for by the “Project Rural Innovation for Mental Health Enhancement,” or PRIME program, which OU researchers launched in 2023. The program was funded by a $5.6 million federal grant stemming from the 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.

The bill, among other things, poured federal dollars into schools, training programs and other efforts to address rising concerns about a youth mental health crisis.

But this spring, federal officials said they were going to stop paying out $1 billion in grant money early. (Several states, including New York and Wisconsin, have sued the U.S. Education Department in an effort to reinstate some of that funding.)

The funding for OU’s PRIME program will end this December, instead of December 2027.

The National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) has been monitoring mental health training programs that received letters of grant non-continuation from the Education Department. Kelly Vaillancourt Strobach, director of policy and advocacy, said they’ve counted more than 200 programs that were alerted they would no longer be funded.

In a letter to OU, which the program shared with NPR, the Department of Education said affected programs “reflect the prior Administration’s priorities and policy preferences and conflict with those of the current Administration.”

In a letter to OU, which the program shared with NPR, the department said the grant-funded program reflects “the prior Administration’s priorities and policy preferences and conflict with those of the current Administration.” It provided a list of reasons the grant may have been canceled, but did not specify which applied to OU.

The department did not respond to NPR’s request for comment.

Programs that received grant cancellation notices have been allowed to file a request for reconsideration, which a program representative told NPR PRIME has done. So far, they haven’t heard back.

Vaillancourt Strobach said due to the vague nature of the department’s notices, several programs have sent letters requesting more information. She said they’re asking questions such as, “How did you, 1) Make the decision to cancel these grants? 2) What criteria are you going to use to evaluate someone’s appeal? And 3) [they] keep saying … they’re envisioning these grants to align with this administration’s priorities. … We want to know, what does that mean?”

The Education Department letter included a footnote that said its mission is to “promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access.”

Vaillancourt Strobach said proper behavioral health care is essential to those goals – it improves student outcomes, reduces chronic absenteeism and equips students for life after school.

“None of that can happen if we’re not addressing student wellness,” she said.

Rural schools often struggle to provide mental health support

According to a study published in 2022 in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, rural schools are 19% less likely than city schools to report that they’re providing mental health assessments to students. The most common reasons they gave: inadequate access to mental health professionals and inadequate funding.

One important measure of a school system’s mental health resources is the number of school counselors it employs. The American School Counselor Association recommends at least one counselor for every 250 students. However, according to ASCA, only three states — Hawaii, New Hampshire and Vermont — meet this threshold.

Oklahoma has one school counselor for every 361 students, according to ASCA.

Studies have shown students who can access school counselors have better academic and behavioral outcomes and are better prepared for college or a career.

And the stakes in Oklahoma are high – as of July, federal data shows all 77 of the state’s counties were experiencing some level of shortage of mental health professionals.

OU’s PRIME program aimed to address some of those needs by chipping away at the shortage of mental health providers in Oklahoma schools, more than three-quarters of which serve rural communities.

For every year PRIME students got grant funding, they committed to working in a rural Oklahoma school for two years.

Brittany Hott, who oversees PRIME, said so far, the program has graduated 16 providers and has 24 students currently working toward degrees.

“Some of the schools that we have been able to staff had critical shortages for more than three years,” she said.

Before news of the grant non-continuation reached Hott’s desk, the program had already accepted its next round of students — 10 counselors, 12 behavior analysts and five social workers. Hott says the PRIME-funded programs had a long waitlist. There were 56 applications for 12 slots of behavior analysts alone.

She said after being notified the funding would end in December, only five future behavior analysts, seven counselors and one social worker have decided to stay with the program.

“It’s a hard conversation to say, ‘You’re well qualified. We really hope that you will still come. We can provide funding until December,'” Hott said. “And so many say, ‘I can’t do this.'”

Student Anna Olson has a plan to pay for her last semester of tuition: She got a research position, and she’s also getting a part-time job, which she’ll have to squeeze in between classwork and an internship.

And while OU’s graduate program will continue to train future mental health service providers, Cian Brown, who teaches in the program, said losing the PRIME grant makes that path less feasible for students.

“What’s being lost is providing these affordable opportunities for students who are interested to come back and serve their communities,” Brown said.

“You’re losing out on an opportunity to support these students and their communities.”

A degree that can help students thrive

At Friend Public School in Chickasha, Okla., Bailey Smith is setting up her new classroom before students return at the end of the summer. Smith will be starting her fourth year as a teacher. It’s the job she planned for, but not long ago, it was also one she considered leaving.

“I was like, ‘I don’t know if I’m going to make it. It’s not what I had expected it to be,’ ” she recalled.

Smith studied to be an elementary school teacher, but said she didn’t feel like she had the skills to help every student in her classroom excel, and she started feeling burnt out.

Then, she got accepted into the first cohort of OU’s PRIME program. She graduated, debt-free, in the spring with a master’s degree in special education with an emphasis in applied behavior analysis.

Smith said the opportunity changed the trajectory of her teaching career: She got the tools and support she needed to make a difference in some of her students’ lives, including one student with autism who had difficulty communicating verbally.

“He was just miserable every day at school,” she said.

“My [graduate program] supervisor, she came in, and she taught me all these skills for teaching language to him… and how to meet his needs. And he just, he thrived.”

When Smith found out about the PRIME program’s non-continuation notice, she said it was a hard pill to swallow that the next set of teachers may not get the same opportunities she had.

“I know it [would have benefited] Oklahoma schools,” Smith said. “Because it already has.”

Edited by: Nicole Cohen
Audio story produced by: Lauren Migaki