Budgeting for Educational Equity

Expanding Access to Behavioral Health and Other Services for Students and Maximizing Interagency Collaboration

• CASBO and WestEd • Season 2 • Episode 4

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In this episode, dig into ways schools can advance equity by expanding "whole child" services that are available to students at sites. Dr. Chaun Powell, Senior Chief of Student Services for the Alameda County Office of Education, helps identify key approaches for maximizing funding sources for these services -- with a particular focus on behavioral and mental health supports -- and seizing new opportunities to partner with other agencies that serve children.

*Be sure to check out the Companion Brief to this episode*

California is in the throes of rolling out major initiatives that create greater access for students to a range of vital services  to better support all areas of children's  development and learning, including the California Community Schools Partnership Program, California's Children and Youth Behavioral Health Initiative, Extended Learning Opportunities Program, and Family First  Prevention Services Act.

These initiatives present a new era of possibility for school districts and county offices to blend and braid funding to increase and sustain services. Chaun leads us through this new landscape of programs and policies that promote interagency collaboration. With insight and curiosity, she helps to explore questions around innovative funding, strengthening collaboration across systems, and centering equity.

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About Our Guest 

Dr. Chaun Powell, Senior Chief of Student Services, Alameda COE, is  a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW), school social worker, educational leader, writer and adjunct faculty member at San José State University & California State University East Bay.  Her unique background in education, community based work and child welfare helps her bring a cross systems lens and experience to serving children, youth and families in schools and the community.  Prior to joining Alameda COE, she served as a site level Dean of Students, and as Executive Director, Youth Health & Wellness for Santa Clara COE, where she also led a statewide Professional Learning Network for educators on school-based billing.  

About our host

Jason Willis serves as  Director of Strategic Resource Planning and Implementation for WestEd, and he is a former chief business official in several California school districts

About our series

Budgeting for Educational Equity is presented byCASBO) and WestEd. We are grateful to the Sobrato Family Foundation for additional support.

Budgeting for Educational Equity

Season 2, Episode 4

Seizing the Moment to Expand Access to Student Services by Maximizing Interagency Collaboration and Funding Sources -- with Dr. Chaun Powell

 
Opening quote

Theme Music Starts.

Jason Willis, host:

Welcome back to Budgeting for Educational Equity. I’m Jason Willis and I hope you’ve been enjoying our series. You’re in for another great episode ahead…

As you probably know if you work at or around schools, California is in the throes of numerous ambitious and enormous efforts to create greater success and access to a range of services for students. These build on a “whole child” approach for better supporting all areas of a child’s development and learning. And -- they present a whole new era of possibility for school districts and county offices of education to maximize funding and intra- and inter-agency collaboration.

In this episode, Dr. Chaun Powell, Senior Chief of Student Services for the Alameda County Office of Education, leads us through this new landscape of inter-agency programs and efforts – with a particular focus on behavioral and mental health. Chaun helps us explore questions including: How can local education agencies innovate to increase and sustain funding sources for student services? What are the ways we can build and strengthen collaboration and coordination across systems? And how can school leaders center equity as they carry out these efforts?

Chaun brings unique experience and perspective, having served in the social work and child welfare arenas before becoming an educational administrator, first in Santa Clara County and now in Alameda County. This past year she’s also led a statewide Professional Learning Network for colleagues on school-based billing. Chaun is one of the go-to people when it comes to understanding all the moving parts for billing and expanding access to services. When she joined me recently for a conversation, I started by asking her to characterize this current moment we’re in…


Dr. Chaun Powell, Senior Chief of Student Services, Alameda County Office of Education:

Yeah, thanks Jason. Thanks for having me. You know, I think we're really at this point where in education we have the opportunity to do transformational work and I'm ecstatic about the possibilities of the work that we can do. We have some major initiatives that you have lifted up -- one of them being in education, our community schools work -- and Alameda County Office of Ed has the privilege of serving as the state technical assistance center for that work. And so, when we're thinking about the whole child, we're thinking about who our young people are at the core, the soul of their being. And as educators we're talking about how do we create schools that belong to our communities that are about not only teaching and learning from a curriculum and instruction aspect, but how do we leverage the assets that our community organizations bring into our schools? How do we have cultures and climates in our schools that are grounded in inclusion and belonging? And so how do we not only touch the minds, but the hearts and souls of the young people and ensure that we have the access to resources to touch those different parts of the young people that we serve and their families.

Jason:

Mm-hmm. And I'm curious, I mean, you're talking a lot here about this opportunity to do this transformational work, and I really appreciate the asset-based approach that you're thinking about, how we can build on what's really going well in schools and how we can pull that forward into even better opportunities, better access for kids that need it the most. And so, how would you describe your optimism about this moment in the state? And I suppose I'll also say that some of our audiences are chief business officers [or] superintendents that have been around the block a lot in public education, in California, [and they] might say, Oh, this is just another set of initiatives that the state is launching that California wants to move through and this is going to come and go. How would you respond to that? Where do you draw optimism for this moment as being different from maybe the prior ones?

Chaun:

Sure. I think there's two things that I'm seeing in this moment that’s drastically different. Number one is the investment of historical one-time dollars in a variety of areas of work. So we have the community schools funding. That's a $5 billion initiative sitting with the California Department of Education within education; we have UPK [Universal Pre-Kindergarten], we have ELOP [Extended Learning Opportunity Program], so we have a lot of different one-time dollars in the education space. But what I think folks are not talking about or are not as aware of is we're also seeing transformational fiscal investments in our behavioral health sector through the Children and Youth Behavioral Health Initiative [CYBHI], which is another $4.7 billion. That is an ask for schools to work very differently with our health-based sector at the state and county and local levels. And then also on the child welfare side, we have the Family First Prevention Services Act, which is another several billion dollars of one time investments to help us develop infrastructure. So that's part one. 

But the second part I think is where we really are seeing transformation, and that is built in sustainable funding, right? And so some of that built in sustainable funding within the CYBHI is the introduction of the Statewide All-Payer School-Linked Services Fee Schedule, which is a shift in policy that allows schools to generate ongoing revenues for some of these behavioral health services that we're seeing happening in schools. Within the Family First and Prevention Services Act, we have title federal funding that is going to be ongoing funding toward preventing young people from becoming involved and impacted in our child welfare system. So, I think in short, what we're seeing is not only one-time investments, but also sustainable funding investments being built into these initiatives.

Jason:

Yeah, I think that that really offers up some reason for optimism for sure. And all these other investments that are coming from multiple different sectors is also suggestive of this wondering about, well, why are schools involved in this issue? Why is this important? And can you talk a bit about why you see it as being not only important for schools, but also important as a matter of achieving educational equity?

Chaun:

Absolutely. For me, it really goes back to our young people being whole people. And so, when we talk about serving the “whole child,” we cannot do that in isolation, but we do need to be working in partnership with folks. When we're talking about serving students, well, where are students at most of the time? In their community. And in their community [they’re] at school sites. So when we talk about the role of education being to support the whole child, schools are the place where our young people are, and so when we talk about educational equity and removing barriers, some of the things that we know are that, we've seen increased needs for young people, those that are manifesting in our school sites, the behavioral health needs, increases in accessing our child welfare system. These are all showing up and they're coming with our young people to their school sites. But we also know that in terms of a service delivery perspective and meeting these needs, that we're able to remove barriers -- barriers to things like transportation, barriers to things like access -- when these services and supports are provided at school. And what the data shows is not only are students more likely to obtain these supports and services when they're offered at school sites, but also to complete them when they're offered at school sites. And so for us in education, it's really owning that we have a responsibility to educate the whole child, the whole human, and we do that in partnership with our colleagues that are serving in some of these different agencies with a recognition, though, that we are an essential part of that process because we are where our young people and our families are a large majority of the time.

Jason:

Yeah, and to that end, Chaun, one of the things that comes up for me is, there are individuals that sit in education or behavioral health or child welfare that are largely trying to support the same children and families. And I'm wondering if you can talk about the systematic barriers that you see across those sectors that are perhaps in the way right now for getting even better opportunity, better access to those services for children and families.

[9:48]

Chaun:

So, a couple of things that are coming up for me as you ask that question, Jason, is number one -- is policy. And so as we're looking at supporting some of these young people, each of these agencies function under a different set of statutes, right? When you're talking about education, we largely function under the education code. Our health providers largely function under the health and safety codes. And those working in child welfare largely function under the welfare and institutions codes. So from a policy perspective, we're all ascribing to different sets of statues and laws, and we're seeing some transformational conversations around that as well that are policy, that are asking us or demanding us -- expecting us -- to actually have collaborative and shared leadership across our different agencies. [Those] are some of the expectations and pillars of some of these initiatives that we're seeing. 

But the other piece that I think is coordination of services and supports for young people. When we talk about some of the barriers for families, it is that they don't have the capacity to work with 13 different people from 13 different agencies. And so one of the things that schools can offer is a place for some coordination and alignment of the supports and services that are happening for young people, which actually removes barriers. I think oftentimes we come from a lens of if we have more services that meets the needs – [but] what we've heard loud and clear from families is just inundating services without coordination actually more often than not is a barrier for them. It's overwhelming. And sometimes they throw up their hands and say, I don't know how to navigate this system and I can't navigate this system. And so, I think for me, to your question -- that coordination piece is really critical as we're talking about equity access and ensuring that young people and families are getting these supports. 

Jason:

Yeah. I mean, I think on this point, yeah, dead-on around the coordination and the collaboration issues that come up across these agencies. So sitting here, and again, thinking about our listeners, let‘s say I'm in a school system and I'm saying, Okay, I can hear what Dr. Powell's saying. That makes a lot of sense. It makes sense to me in terms of what my own experience in working in a system has been. What would you offer out like as the starting place or the basic building blocks for those individuals that want to get started on that path to getting to better coordination with agencies that are working with the same students and families? What do you say to them?

[12:38]

Chaun:

Yeah, I think this is an area where I've had a lot of practice on both sides working in some of these different systems. I think the first thing that I would say is the initial conversation needs to be about what is our shared goal? What is our shared aspirational state for the work that we're going to be doing together? And what I've found is when you have a collective clarity on your why, the commitment to show up and be present and engage in the work can really drive how that collaboration moves forward. I think that's always top of mind for me, is establishing a collaborative and a collective “why” for your work. 

The second thing that comes up for me is approaching the work from a lens of curiosity because oftentimes as I'm supporting our teams and supporting folks across the state, what I find is that we know our policies and we know our systems in education; and the health field, they know their policies and they know the approach in that sector. And oftentimes we come to the table from a place of knowing as opposed to curiosity. And when we come from a place of curiosity around, well, why is that your policy? Why is that your practice? Then what it allows us to do is to begin to learn the ways in which the different systems function. And this is important because the reality is we oftentimes spend time with the shame and blame of, “your system sucks” and “your system sucks,” as opposed to taking a step back and recognizing that regardless to what field we work in, when we're talking about equity and justice, that many of our systems were not designed to support the most vulnerable students that we're talking about. And so when we approach it from a lens of curiosity, then it allows us to have empathy and grace with one another, and be willing to reimagine and look at, Well, where are there possibilities for us to do things differently? And what I’ve found is that once we get to that place of curiosity and understanding that our systems as designed are functioning as they should be, then there's a willingness to actually co-construct new ways of being; and it's in that space that innovation can occur. And what we found is that when that innovation occurs, there are actually moves and strategies that we can make to begin blending and braiding funding; begin coordinating services, creating new structures and new systems that are actually effective. But it starts with that work of coming to the space with curiosity and a willingness to co-construct a common meaning and a common frame for how you're going to engage in the work together.

Music interlude.

Jason:

I wonder too, if, just reflecting on a couple of those experiences, Chaun, that you've had, I imagine that not every institution's going to be open to wanting to work through that level of coordination or that level of collaboration. And you know this work is probably hard. There's not models or examples of this that are as common as what we see in other disciplines, if you will. And I'm just wondering if you could raise up some of the challenges that you've worked with counties or other districts on, like progressing through this ability to achieve higher levels of coordination and how those partners and those systems and those leaders have worked through what might be one or two of the biggest challenges you've seen?

Chaun:

Yeah, I think number one is policy. And so, some of the practices that we have had opportunities to do, I'll give some examples of some of the work we did in Santa Clara County, which was actually to develop process systems leadership teams where we actually look at the different initiatives our agencies are responsible for. I'll use the example of behavioral health services for young people in our county. One of the things that we did was put together a cross collaborative leadership team that was made up of folks from our behavioral health services department, our health plans, as well as our county office of education and some of our community-based providers that contract with those agencies. And our conversation was around a common goal of delivering behavioral health services to students but starting from a place of assessing some of the initiatives in the different sectors. We looked at the Children's and Youth Behavioral Health initiative, but we also looked at understanding what are the ask and expectations around Cal-AIM, what are the ask and expectations around the fee schedule? And we did some mapping -- as a tangible practice -- is actually doing mapping exercises. From doing that, we were able to identify where there were overlaps in the ask, where Cal-AIM was asking for something similar to the CYBHI was asking something similar from the community schools work. And so we were able to do that and identify not only common asks, but then talk about metrics. And from metrics, how do we assess our progress toward this goal? [In] education, we tend to look at suspensions and expulsions and attendance as opposed to our behavioral health services, who oftentimes look at community health indicators. So we used both to establish a common set of metrics for us to look at, and so we went through and we used an activity called process mapping where we actually map out how do referrals move, for example, through the education system, when the student needs access to health-based supports, and they're trying to enter them from the school side? What does that look like when they're trying to enter it from the health-based side? And so through actually doing these activities together -- and I want to repeat that, the togetherness of this process -- it helps us to create a sense of meaning and meaning making about the work that we are doing together. And what we found out was that in the beginning, there was certainly hesitation from some of our agencies, but what we learned in the process was that through that collaboration when we just kept going, kept pushing at it, and part of our pushing at this from the beginning wasn't necessarily to your point that we wanted to work together, but a lot of these policies and expectations are requiring us to come to the table together. And so, as we started chugging along, we came to realize like, Oh, we actually can maximize our resources in taking this approach. We actually can minimize some of the administrative burdens that are, we feel like are weighing us down when we engage in this work. And so I think you're a hundred percent right: We come to the table oftentimes with a sense of skepticism around working together and sometimes even a flat out unwillingness to do that. But with these new policies and expectations, the expectation for us to come together is pushing us to engage in some of the work. And I think it's about better understanding what are actually some of the strategies for building teaming and collective decision-making, collective understanding of the work -- and in lieu of developing five different plans, developing one plan that meets the goals and expectations and deliverables for the collective group. 

Jason:

Yeah, no, I mean the visual that I've got in my mind, Chaun, about what you're saying here is, especially on that last point about the plans, instead of having five plans that may have been individual to a department or to a sector, it’s now a shared plan in which it may be a bit harder to coordinate the work, but there, there's a shared aim, going back to one of your earlier points that you’re really pushing towards.

Chaun:

Absolutely. And I think that's critical -- aligning and coordinating not only practices, but also your plans.

Jason:

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 

 

Music interlude.

Jason:

One thing, Chaun, that you were saying in this last couple of minutes was really around expectation, and, what I was extracting from what you were saying was that you're articulating that the state now has an expectation of local agencies that they are working closer together, [that] they're perhaps coordinating better, even collaborating in some circumstances. And I'm wondering, just for our listeners, if you can raise up those places that you see that expectation being communicated, either in law or policy as it's clearly written or in other ways, where you see the state articulating the expectation that agencies are working more closely together.

Chaun:

Absolutely. I'll actually take us back several years to Systems of Care work and the Systems of Care Assembly Bill 2083 that was launched in the child welfare sector of the work. What Assembly Bill 2083 did was it actually required counties to establish cross-agency MOUs that articulated the role of behavioral health, the role of child welfare, the role of education in providing prevention and support services to young people that are at risk of, or are impacted by the child welfare system. And so that's actually not new policy. That policy has been effective. And what I think that we've seen is a doubling down on that commitment. When we look at the Children's Youth Behavioral Health Initiative, there are expectations within the CYBHI that there is cross-systems collaboration between behavioral health departments, education entities, as well as Medi-Cal and commercial health plans. That's in the statute, right? And we can find that in the health and safety codes as well as the welfare and institutions codes. When we come into the education space and we look at the community schools work and the policies around community schooling, and we think about the four pillars in the California framework, one of those pillars is shared and collaborative leadership and decision-making, right? And so, these are spaces where we're seeing these expectations not only set out in practice, but in the policies themselves.  


[24:20]

Music interlude.  

Jason:

We’re going to explore collaboration and funding much more in just a moment, but first, let’s learn a bit more about our guest, Dr. Chaun Powell. As I mentioned earlier, she brings a unique background to this work. 

Chaun:

I come to this work as a social worker by training. And so, as a social worker, I've had the opportunity to work in a lot of different spaces before coming into education. Some of that work has included working in community-based organizations. As a social worker, I have done residential treatment as a social worker, primarily providing social work and counseling services to young women and adult women with eating disorders in addition to doing a stint in child welfare as an emergency response social worker -- so really out in the field conducting allegations of abuse and neglect and supporting families navigating that system. And in doing all of those different types of social work, I really realized my passion for working with young people and families, and that schools really provided me with an opportunity to work with young people, some of our most vulnerable young people across different areas of need. And so I came into education in the alternative world as a social worker at Hayward Community Day School here in Alameda County. And then spent some time down in Santa Clara as a school site direct service provider, district administrator in student services, a county administrator as an executive director of health and wellness for Santa Clara County Office of Ed prior to taking on the role of Senior Chief of Student Services here at Alameda County Office of Ed.

Jason:

Wow. I mean that's such an incredible and diverse background. Chaun. I imagine that you've just seen so many different aspects and elements of our child serving sectors and how that has contributed to students and families' wellbeing. And also, this brings up for me, Chaun, a wondering about what's motivated you in this work? And I mean you tried out – or not tried out -- but you've been working in so many of these different aspects of serving children and families. What motivates you for this work?

Chaun:

Yeah, I think what motivates me is a commitment to equity and social justice for our young people and a belief that no matter what zip code or what upbringing or what experiences our young people have, that they really do have the ability to thrive. And I think for me, that belief started as a young person who held some of the identities that we oftentimes are focusing on in schools. So I hold the identity of being a Black queer woman, right? And so when we're talking about some of the inequities that we see in schools, I bring lived experience to that. But I'm also the daughter of youth pastors. I grew up in a church and my parents were youth pastors in East Oakland. And so when you think about East Oakland and the community served there, it's a vibrant community. It's a rich community with amazing culture. But when most people think about it, they think about the ways in which harm has occurred to folks in the community. So I think both the lived experience and my upbringing is what has shaped my lens and my belief that our young people can thrive despite what those conditions are. I'm a product of it and I also have had a chance to see that throughout my life. 

Jason:

Yeah, that's so beautiful, Chaun. 

 

[28:34]

Music interlude.

Jason:

So one thing, Chaun, I want to drill down a little bit further on, and then transition, is one of the things that you had worked on, as I understand when you were in Santa Clara County, was establishing this wellness center model. And I think that this is something that's very familiar, certainly to you, and becoming more familiar in the education sector, especially as issues of mental and behavioral health become more of a needed area to be addressed in the education space. And I was wondering if you could, especially reflecting on our last conversation here, reflect about how various sectors and actors can collaborate to support children and families, the wellness center model, and how you see that collaborative approach playing out through that very practical, tangible space to deliver support for students and families.

Chaun:

Absolutely. In Santa Clara County, there was a deep commitment from our County Superintendent Marianne Dewan and the team there to schools being centers of wellness. And when we talk about operationalizing that, we certainly think about our tier one to tier three supports, right? And when we're talking about the tier one, what are we doing for all students? We're thinking about school climate and culture, social emotional learning. We're thinking about those tier two more targeted supports; what do those group practices look like or those early intervention supports look like? And then at the tier three, those individualized behavioral health supports that are more intensive that our young people need. 

And what we realized was that we actually needed a place on campus for young people to go to access the supports and services, but also for adults who are providing these supports and services to coordinate. And so what the Wellness Center model did was it was an opportunity for us to bring together our school-based providers providing these services, our school counselors, our school social workers, but also our community-based organizations that were providing services to young people and providing an opportunity and a space for that to happen on campus as well as our local partner agencies, whether those were city agencies like in Santa Clara County, the City of San Jose, who was providing supports and services to some of our most vulnerable populations; our behavioral health services department through our school-linked services team within behavioral health that were providing these supports and services to young people and putting them in a centralized location on school campuses with a coordination of supports team approach, where those partners are meeting regularly together to talk about the individual needs of students and who’s doing what to support them, but also the collective needs as it related to health and wellbeing for students at that school site. And to develop, again, a single plan that articulated what supports were being provided and by whom. And then the thing that I think is really critical and amazing about this is that not only do we begin to talk about the coordination of those supports, but it allowed us to be able to build an infrastructure for billing our Medi-Cal and commercial health plans for the services that we were providing to students, and then being able to begin to prepare to seek reimbursements to reinvest and expand those supports and services and the critical pieces of that being the teaming and coordination through the wellness centers. 

[32:39]

Jason:

Yeah, so that last piece, Chaun, really strikes me as being almost like a vitally important part, it sounds like, because we were talking earlier about how a lot of the state resources are one-time investments and that some of those efforts embed ongoing funding streams. And I think you're alluding to one in particular there, around the opportunity to bill Medi-Cal for reimbursement on services that are being offered through existing fee schedules or the new one that you had referenced before that's being introduced in the coming months for schools to bill from.

Chaun:

Absolutely. And so, yes, schools have historically been able to bill Medi-Cal for health-based services through something called the Local Education Agency Billing Option Program (LEA-BOP), which more than 50 percent of LEAs throughout the state participate in. But they have participated primarily in the context of providing services to students who have IEPs.

Jason:

Mm-hmm.

Chaun:

And it wasn't until maybe two years ago, almost three years ago, when we had what’s called a state plan amendment that goes through the healthcare side of the industry, that expanded schools’ ability to be able to use the LEA billing option program to provide services to students in the general education program as well. So, we've had this in existence for some time now, and I think due to a lot of complexities with things like auditing and other pieces, we haven't maximized it in the school setting, the use of the billing option program, but a lot of policy changes have been underway and have taken effect to streamline some of those processes, reduce some of the burdens. So, we're starting to see more schools leveraging the billing option program for Medi-Cal -- but we also have this new All-State Fee Schedule, a school linked fee schedule that is set to become effective January 1st, 2024. And this is a transformational change for us in education because it provides the first-ever ongoing sustainable funding source to fund behavioral health services for students in school, regardless of whether they have an IEP or are in the general education program – and is applicable for not only Medi-Cal, but also our young people who have commercial health insurance. And when we think commercial health insurance, we're thinking about young people who have health insurance that is covered through their parent’s employer most often, as well as disability insurance. And so, the fee schedule is totally transformational, and we are talking about revenues coming into school at a very high level to expand into do this work.  

Jason:

And, Chaun, this is something that district and county leaders should start preparing for, right?

Chaun:

Every school in the state should be utilizing this resource. It becomes effective January 1st, 2024. But some key things about it is it allows us to generate revenue for services provided to not only students with Medi-Cal, but commercial and disability insurance as well. It also covers young people from ages zero to 26. So when we talk about Cradle to Career, it is the first funding source that allows us to support zero to 26 years old. The dollars that come in from the fee schedule are unrestricted dollars. I want to repeat that for the CBOs listening to the call, the dollars that are coming in from the fee schedule are unrestricted dollars, different than the LEA billing option program, which are restricted dollars. And the last piece of the fee schedule that I think I want to highlight for our CBOs is that the fee schedule is a straight fee for service model, which is not the same interim payment model as the billing option program for behavioral health services. It's a straight fee for service, which means that there are a lot less, if you will, complexities in terms of the reimbursement processes for the LEAs that are participating in the fee schedule -- and the rates are a hundred percent of the state rates as opposed to the LEA-BOP program, which we're seeing about 50% because the reimbursement is only the federal share. So, when we look at this, the fee schedule is an essential revenue source for all CBOs to be looking at and to be working on implementing within their LEA.

Jason:

Yeah, I mean, I appreciate you coming back around to that point, Chaun, and drawing out in particular some of the even greater benefits from existing funding streams that school systems can get access to. And I'm also hearing just to maybe kind of close on this point, I'm also hearing that embedded in this fee schedule, which is available for any school district, school system, LEA to use -- but also there is a component of equity that is really being pressed upon here, particularly for those families and students that qualify for Medi-Cal?

Chaun:

Absolutely. I think the conversation around equity is critical for the business of schools, right? And so regardless to whether we are looking at the fee schedule or we're looking at blending and braiding dollars from cross systems agencies, our work as business officials in education is equity. And in fact, one of the goals of our team here is how do we operationalize equity in school finance? And as business officials working in education, that is fundamentally the question that we should be asking ourselves and looking at as we step into our workspaces every single, every single day. 

Jason:

And, Chaun, one of the things that strikes me also as I listen to you, is that it sounds like in a way you also function or see yourself as a school business official – that you have this sharp awareness of the different funding sources and funding mechanisms and you kind of wear multiple hats in addition to student services?

Chaun:

In a way. So I don't talk about this often um, but I actually am a certified chief business official. I went through CASBO’s CBO program.

Jason:

Oh, there it is.

Chaun:

And one of the things that was just so profound to me was, I think when I went through the program, we had one class and one conversation about equity on the business side of the house. And I don't care if we're talking about, you know, we talked about of course, the fiscal budget cycle and all of that -- but what about facilities and maintenance and operations and all of these other aspects of business -- we didn't talk about the equity in that a lot. And so I do, I see myself as student services, but also especially in the billing work, I lead a whole billing -- part of my team is a billing team which deals specifically with school finance, so I do feel like in this work in that way, I do sit at the intersection of business and ed services.

Jason:

I definitely heard that today, Chaun -- and just to close out on this funding part, would you name any other funding sources that LEAs could access or be thinking about, particularly for being able to expand and sustain behavioral and mental health services in their schools?

Chaun:

Um, A lot of our schools are working in collaboration with our behavioral health services teams through what is called MHSSA or the Mental Health Student Services Act, which also has ongoing funding for behavioral health services for young people. And one of the best parts about MHSSA is the PEI or Prevention and Early Intervention dollars that are explicitly set aside for young people and are oftentimes provided in schools. And so the Mental Health Services Act has language in the statute that requires a certain allocation of that funding to go toward providing services to young people that are school aged. And oftentimes those services are provided in the school setting. So that's another sustainable funding source that we've been seeing. And then the other one is actually coming from the Family First Prevention Services Act, or in California, the Family First Prevention Services program, which is primarily housed in social services or child welfare fair. And what this provides is ongoing funding to become prevention oriented as it relates to the possibility of young people becoming impacted by the child welfare system. So, there are ongoing dollars that have been given to our child welfare and social services agencies, as well as federal title funds that can be used to support sustaining some of the behavioral health and mental health needs of young people in schools as well. And so I think while there are these ongoing funding sources, what's critical here goes back to what we were talking about earlier, Jason, around the cross systems partnership and collaboration. In order to access these dollars, which are meant for young people and schools, you have to be in communication and collaboration with your partner agencies.

Jason:

Yeah, I mean, I'm sitting here thinking to myself, Chaun, as a former chief business officer, I probably never would have come to a point where I would've understood that there were these resources that were coming out of sectors that weren't the one that I was working in in education. And so what would you say to a CBO or superintendent, what steps do you feel like are most crucial for them to take in understanding, I think, one, how to get access to those resources, but I think going back to some of what you were talking about is the conditions for better coordination, is how and who do I get around the table, right? Because it's not like I'm just going to walk up to Medi-Cal and I'm going to say, okay, Medi-Cal is going to open up a funding stream for me. There seems to be a little bit more of a complicated process to get access to these vital resources to support students on campuses. What advice would you give to CBOs out there about how to do that?

Chaun:

Yeah, the first one is to breathe.

Jason:

(Laughter). Love that.  

Chaun:

To breathe. And I say that laughing, but also with a pure heart because the systems are transforming, right? And so just breathing, and like I said, approaching it from a place of curiosity is step one. The second thing that I will say is when it comes to the billing of Medi-Cal and commercial [health plans], this will actually be housed at the state level with the Department of Health Care Services, who, currently we in education already work with, because it's the same agency that oversees and implements the LEA billing option program that we were previously talking about…

Jason:

Okay, all right.

Chaun:

…That more than half of LEAs in the state are already utilizing.

Jason:

Yep, so there’s already familiarity…

Chaun:

There's already the connection there and there's, there's familiarity there already. So that's two. One is Breathe. Two is, some of the people you already know, you just haven't been having this conversation with them. The third one is at the local level, it is you know partnering with people within your organization. As a county leader in Santa Clara County, I worked very closely with our business team and on the educational services side of the house, we had partnerships with behavioral health, we had partnerships with social services. What we did was we brought in our CBO and our business teams, we started inviting them into those meeting spaces with us. And that began to build some of those relationships. And it is probably the quickest and most streamlined way for business team members to become a part of that conversation is to leverage the existing relationships that your partners within your existing agency already have. And I'll say now, after doing that for the last couple of years in Santa Clara County, our fiscal team knows the health fiscal team at the health agency, at the behavioral health agency. Our IT team knows how to partner with them and who some of those folks are, but I don't think you're working in isolation. I think the name of the game here, Jason, is teaming. Teaming within your organization so that you can better team across organizations -- and knowing that you don't have to go out and try to connect with these people individually, that you can do that in the context of existing teaming and meeting structures that already exist, that historically CBOs have not participated in with the expectation that someone in the educational services team was participating in those meetings -- and now more than ever, it's imperative that the educational services and the business side of the house show up to those meetings together.

Jason:

Yeah, I mean, I think it's such a brilliant echo, frankly, Chaun, of the the LCFF and how we articulated at the dawn of that reform in public education of really wanting to promote the business and the educational and program sides of school districts to be working more collaboratively together. And there's tangible structures like the Local Control and Accountability Plan that now are intended to embody that relationship. And here we are again, as you're putting on the table, the name of the game is teaming, and now we're going from maybe a teaming 101 within your agency to a teaming 201 of reaching across different agencies that are working with the same children and families.

Chaun:

Absolutely. Absolutely. You've got it.

Jason: 

So, this is advice that you would offer to state policymakers because I think that, and every year there's a cycle, every year there's new laws and new regulations that are introduced. This certainly will not be the last time that we hear about the opportunity to continue to encourage and incentivize this cross-collaboration. But several years in now, you've lived through this experience of working at the local level making sense of a lot of these state laws at the ground floor. What advice would you give to state policy makers for what they should be paying attention to seriously considering in future cycles to help further accelerate this work going forward?

[48:57]

Chaun:

Yeah, I think one of the things that I've seen in the most recent cycles is continuing to have the expectation around the teaming and cross-systems collaboration. And I think that needs to continue. The other thing that I think is coming up for me is that I think our state can really do a better job of articulating the intersectionality of the work. And what I mean by that is oftentimes as things are rolling out from the state level, they seem to be rolling out in silos, right? So, the Community Schools, Cal-AIM, CYBHI -- they're not necessarily presented as in conversation with one another at the state level. And so what that leads to is a lot of our local folks trying to do that sense-making -- and I think it would be a huge benefit to see our policymakers writing policy and sharing out the intention and operationalizing those from a place of intersectionality at the outset. And I'm hopeful that we're beginning to move more toward this direction because I'm looking at the CYBHI and the CYBHI sticks out for me, Jason, because it is the first state level initiative that I have seen that explicitly names five different agencies at the state level and what their roles are in this work. And so, I think they did that at the state level where we can clearly see which state department is responsible for which stream of work connected to children's youth behavioral health, and my hope is that we, again, our policymakers take that next step around what does that mean for the local level and what is the role of each agency at the local level in implementing some of these initiatives and policies that they are sending out. And then the last one is an ask that we really think about, as we are sending and creating opportunities for funding and one-time dollars, that we really look at reducing barriers to blending and braiding for our local folks on the ground because there isn't one funding source that can fund the totality of a program. So when we think about wellness centers, there isn't one funding source, right? What we need to be able to do at the local level is to really blend and braid funding across the different funding streams that are available to us within education as well as our local partner agencies if we really want to be able to do the work well. And I think that there's ways in which policymakers can reduce some of those barriers by reducing some of the administrative burdens and ask and opening up space for collective planning and blending and braiding of funding.

[52:08]

Jason:

Yeah, and so I think on that last point, I think important to kind of capture, so it sounds like for the CBO, for the LEA, getting into this space really does involve both knowing and then utilizing a range of funds and how that matches with whatever it is that they're trying to construct from a service or support or programmatic perspective that ultimately maximizes the dollar across a variety of different sectors.

Chaun:

You got it. Absolutely. It is about maximizing dollars. It is about blending and braiding funding streams toward the identified goal that your agency has set. And it doesn't matter whether it's a wellness center, whether it's behavioral health services, whether it's afterschool programming, there are plenty of fiscal resources available and it's as the CBO, it's understanding what those resources are and how they can work together.  

 

Theme music begins. 

Jason:

Well, that’s where we’re going to wrap things up. Many thanks again to Dr. Chaun Powell, Senior Chief of Student Services for the Alameda County Office of Education for all of her insights and guidance. In the Show Notes, we’ll provide links to many of the programs and resources she mentioned.

If you haven’t already, be sure to follow us or subscribe to our podcast wherever you listen, so you’ll receive the latest episodes as soon as they come out. You can also join the conversation with us on Twitter at @budget4edequity.

Budgeting for Educational Equity is a partnership between WestEd and CASBO. Paul Richman writes and produces the episodes along with me; Alyssa Perez at WestEd provides research and develops our companion briefs; Tommy Dunbar handles our music, sound and editing. This series is also made possible by the generous support of the Sobrato Family Foundation.

I’m Jason Willis – and we’ll see you out there.