Port Townsend School District
Project: Port Townsend Schools Mental Health Services
Request: $15,000
Your gift keeps clinicians in Port Townsend schools when the funding stops.
Port Townsend School District places licensed mental health clinicians on campus one day a week at Port Townsend High School and one day a week at Blue Heron Middle School, serving students in grades 6–12 at both schools and the OCEAN Program.
Clinicians are co-located in the buildings and provide assessment, early intervention, treatment, crisis response, suicide prevention, care coordination and referral services — regardless of a family's insurance coverage or ability to pay. Because students are typically seen weekly over an extended period, which is what the level of need requires, one clinician day per week serves roughly 15 students per school across a year.
The need, measured locally
The 2025 Healthy Youth Survey for Jefferson County found that 28.6% of 8th graders, 31.9% of 10th graders and 35.1% of 12th graders reported feeling sad or hopeless for two or more weeks. Clinicians at Port Townsend High School report anxiety, depression and family issues as their most common presenting concerns; at Blue Heron, general mental health, school and depression.
Over 50% of mental health conditions develop in adolescence. And the average young person doesn't receive mental health services until seven to eleven years after symptoms first appear. Without help, some of those become symptoms and behaviors harmful. What began as something treatable becomes something entrenched, harder to address and far more costly, for the individual and the community both.
School-based services compress that timeline dramatically, because the clinician is already in the building where the student spends their day.
Here are the problems you can help solve
The Olympic Educational Service District, which contracts with the district's mental health providers, was not awarded Jefferson County 1/10 of 1% grant funding for the upcoming cycle. Without additional funding, school-based mental health services will end in February or the beginning of March.
For many students, school-based mental health services are the most accessible and often the only source of support available. Students also seek out help at school precisely when home life is difficult — which is often when an appointment requiring a parent's cooperation and a car is least likely to happen.
What your donation makes possible
The request covers two clinician days per week; one at the middle school and alternative school, one at Port Townsend High School, for 12 weeks.
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 Port Townsend can cross on their own. Your donation keeps the door open in the meantime.
