Committee forwards retroactive DPH‑SFUSD agreement for in‑school mental‑health services

The Homelessness and Behavioral Health Select Committee voted May 12 to forward to the Board of Supervisors a retroactive agreement between the San Francisco Department of Public Health and the San Francisco Unified School District to continue providing educationally related mental health services (IRMS) to students who receive services as part of an Individualized Education Plan.

Dr. Farnaz Marman of DPH described a decade‑long partnership in which DPH and 18 contracted community providers — along with seven county‑run clinics — deliver IRMS in schools, providing individual and group therapy, case management and consultation with education staff. Jean Robinson, SFUSD chief of special education services, described how IRMS fits into a spectrum of school mental‑health supports: short interventions at wellness centers, DIS counseling, IRMS (which requires assessment and IEP goals), and higher‑intensity SEAP and SOAR programs.

Robinson and other district speakers told the committee demand has increased since the COVID pandemic and that IRMS providers and school mental‑health positions remain hard to recruit. Robinson said the district has created a program administrator position to expand services and that additional social workers and clinicians are needed; she said the district would benefit from roughly 10 more clinicians to scale services.

Public comment included personal testimony about IRMS and frustration with delays in data collection; Carolyn Kennedy asked the committee to continue pressing DPH for service‑level and population‑level data. The committee passed a unanimous motion to send the retroactive agreement to the full board as a committee report.