Brinnon School District #46
Project: School-Based Mental Health Services Program
Request: $10,973
Your gift keeps a counselor in the building for the rest of the school year.
In a community of Brinnon's size, the school is more than a place of learning. It is one of the most accessible and trusted points of connection that children and families have. Approximately three-quarters of the school’s 74 students qualify for free or reduced-price school meals.
For the past several years, a licensed mental health clinician has spent one day a week at Brinnon School providing assessment, early intervention, individual treatment, crisis response, suicide prevention, care coordination and referrals for any student who needs it, regardless of insurance coverage or a family's ability to pay. At one day per week, roughly 15 students receive care over a school year.
Many people assume that a child who needs counseling gets counseling. In Brinnon, the path between those two points runs through a series of obstacles that are invisible unless you live there.
There are very few local providers. Appointments elsewhere mean significant travel during working hours, which requires a parent able to take the time off and a vehicle able to make the trip. It means navigating a fragmented behavioral health system, insurance questions, and waitlists. Any one of those can stop a family.
Having a clinician in the school removes those barriers. The child is already in the building. The appointment costs the family nothing, requires no drive, and asks no one to take a day off work.
Here’s the problem you can help solve
The Olympic Educational Service District, which contracts with the mental health providers serving local schools, was not awarded Jefferson County 1/10 of 1% behavioral health grant funding for the upcoming cycle. Those funds have paid for school-based mental health services.
Without replacement funding, Brinnon's services are expected to end in February or early March of the 2026–27 school year. Students currently in ongoing treatment would have their care interrupted mid-year. Students whose needs emerge afterward would have nowhere else to turn.
What your donation makes possible
Brinnon needs help paying for one day per week of licensed clinical services for 15 weeks. Your gift makes that possible.
Students seen through this program have presented with anxiety, low self-esteem, family difficulties, grief, trauma and acute crisis. The expected outcomes are the ones that matter most at this age: reduced symptoms, better emotional regulation and coping skills, increased hope and resilience, improved safety, stronger relationships, and enough steadiness to stay engaged in school. Progress is tracked through clinical assessment, treatment plan review, student feedback and validated measures.
Early help is also the least costly help. Concerns caught in a school office are far easier to address than crises caught later, somewhere more expensive and more frightening.
The bottom line
This is bridge funding, not a long term fix. The district is working towards a lasting solution, but a bridge is exactly what's needed right now when the alternative is a gap no child in Brinnon can cross on their own. Your donation builds it.
