Students and parents find help is out of reach at AISD.
Margaret Bachicha, an assistant principal at Dobie Middle School, didn't know that the Austin Independent School District had hired Gramercy Specialty Clinic as its new mental health services vendor until December 2021, almost a year after the new contract began."We went from having [previous vendor] Vida Clinic on our campus, [which] was providing services for hundreds of our kids on our campus, to nothing," Bachicha said.
In fact,"if we do not move forward at this time, there will be an interruption," Copeland warned, as trustees voiced concerns about whether the clinic would be able to ramp up to meet demand in a district that serves more than 75,000 children. At the time, Gramercy employed only 10 licensed professional counselors who operated primarily through teletherapy services across Texas. Its proposal to the district outlined a plan to increase its staff to meet demand over a six-month period.
Even with these efforts, it's clear the number of students being placed with therapists hasn't nearly reached the levels Vida had delivered. A separate records request revealed that Gramercy received only 1,073 referrals for services from students under its contract through March 25 of this year.
"Most counselors know how to mandate those services; they don't want to refer to Tier 4, if that's not what's best for the student," Bejarano said."I'm hoping that the general public might understand that our layers of in-house professionals are doing a wonderful job in fixing those before they escalate to a Tier 4."
Bejarano said the district plans to put out another call for services soon – not to replace Gramercy, but to expand mental health services within the district."That means we want Gramercy to also provide, but we'd like to reach out to the community because they're in such short supply [of therapists], so we'd like to cover all of our bases," she said."There may be many [requests for proposal] expanding services; we'd love to see this program really developed.
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