The EOP’s purpose is to recruit and retain school-based mental health professionals to serve students across New Mexico, focusing on rural areas with high percentages of at-risk and vulnerable populations. Through a United States Department of Education grant awarded to the NMPED Safe and Healthy Schools Bureau, the EOP offers funding to support school-based mental health providers and those on the road to becoming one. The program has partnered with schools, universities, Indigenous communities and other state agencies to reverse the trend of provider shortages and increase access to care for affected youth. New Mexico’s approach helps students successfully obtain degrees in relevant fields, complete practicums in rural schools, provide licensing support, and grant retention stipends for providers to stay in mental health care.
Apex places a high value on collaborative work within the fields of evaluation, education, and research. We were proud to partner with Rachel McCormick and MC2 to create sustainable data cleaning and data analysis procedures for timely replication for annual reports. We improved data collection efficiency, refined performance measures, and increased the utilization of already available data sources rather than creating new data collection methods. We designed action-oriented surveys for colloquium students and providers that are tailored to inform future gatherings.
Through this project we were confronted by the realities faced by rural districts, many of which didn’t have a full-time mental health provider and were required to share providers with nearby districts. Our schools are doing their absolute best with limited resources, exercising creativity and resilience. School-based mental health professionals often wear many hats. They’re not just providers, but are likely to hold additional roles within the school. And the EOP is making a difference.
See the impact statement for the program here (https://safesupportivelearning.ed.gov/resources/gh/new-mexico-public-education-department-nmped-uses-sbmh-grant-funds-establish-expanding), including a plunging attrition rate as salary enhancements are supporting staff longevity. Forty-six school districts had collectively lost an average of 31 practitioners in each of the five years preceding EOP’s launch. During 2022-2023, that comparative number dropped to only seven.