San Marcos High School held a ribbon cutting ceremony for its new wellness center and successful implementation of the district’s new Culture of Care initiative on Friday, March 7. The campaign was created in coordination with students and community efforts to respond to the call for mental health support across schools. 

The support for increased mental health outreach was driven by calls from the Superintendent Advisory Committee (made up of students from across SBUSD) and responses from the annual Panorama survey gathering feedback from the school community. The campaign  and new wellness center have a profound meaning on the San Marcos campus, which is still reeling from the death of a student by suicide last year. In response to this loss, one of the major initiatives combined the work of Senator Monique Limon’s Office, the LOSSAN Rail Corridor Agency, and Santa Barbara County BWell to install suicide prevention signs along local railroad tracks. Students on the Superintendent Advisory Committee also led a redesigning of the district’s website to prominently display available mental health features to students and launched a video campaign, and the district is now sending out affirmation messages and links to mental health resources via StudentSquare. The final initiative established wellness centers at the three high schools across the district and at Goleta Valley Junior High, offering spaces for students to access mental health resources and take breaks on campus. Comprehensive wellness centers have been established at both San Marcos and Dos Pueblos, while the center at Santa Barbara High is a “work in progress.” 

The ribbon cutting ceremony featured speakers such as the SBUSD Student Board Member and student representative from SBHS Erick Gonzalez, Student Advisory Council members Ava Jane Damery from San Marcos and Sophia Mills from SBHS, SBUSD Superintendent Dr. Hilda Maldonado, State Senator Monique Limon, representatives from LOSSAN, and many others. The focus on mental wellness across SBUSD schools began four years ago by the first Student Board Member Dawson Kelly, who brought to light the dangers of cell phones and social media. The expansion of mental health initiative and the beginning of the Culture of Care was pushed by the current Student Advisory Council. “We’ve had students that have passed away through suicide, and it honestly pains me that if we had the support and resources available…it could have been a much safer environment to speak up,” Gonzalez said of the motivation behind the project. “I think maybe it could have been preventable…I want to try and (create) that environment in our schools so everyone feels safe to speak up.” The Culture of Care initiative was created in collaboration with Senator Monique Limon’s Office, who initiated contact with LOSSAN to implement the signs by the railways. “I thought that it was really important to listen and to try to respond to our students and take some of the direction they’re giving us about how we make these better schools, safer schools, more inclusive schools,” Limon said of her involvement. “The recognition that we need to have more mental health resources is a recognition that’s not just happening in schools. It’s happening in our communities and our cities and our counties.” Limon sees the Culture of Care having broader impacts beyond the school community, saying, “What happens in our schools is a reflection of what’s happening in the community. And so the fact that our students are the first to call it out, to name some of these issues that are happening in our community also means that we have to do the same for the community at large.” 

Along with improving academics and socialization, mental wellness is one of the biggest focuses of the district at the moment. “Mental health is a continuum. There could be a mental illness…that can cause them to take their own lives. Then there’s students that may be suffering from parents’ divorce or a family member dies, and then there’s kids who are really stressed about school, and then there’s having a bad day…the most important thing is that we’re talking about it and we’re promoting asking for help as the norm,” said Superintendent Maldonado. The current goal is to establish wellness centers across all junior high and high schools in SBUSD, eventually in all 18 schools across the district. The biggest challenge facing the Culture of Care is finding funding and support for the project. SBUSD does not receive state funding for projects like these, and so had applied for a countywide grant to create wellness centers in all schools that they did not receive. Dos Pueblos’s wellness center opened its doors in February and is farthest along in the process as it raised money from its foundation. San Marcos had the opening of its center at the March 7 ribbon cutting, and the district is currently working with SBHS leadership to begin the process for the wellness center there. Currently, there is no staffed wellness center at SBHS, but students may be sent to the counseling office where there are two family service therapists and a hospice therapist present to meet with students. Maldonado hopes that the legacy of the wellness centers and the Culture of Care initiative as a whole will leave people feeling “That we created a culture where everybody cares about how students are doing and that we listened to what students need.”

The implementation of the Culture of Care is a response to the widespread calls for mental health support across the district, and leadership remains hopeful it is one that will be effective. Whether or not the initiatives can be seen as a model for schools across the country remains to be seen, but as Senator Limon said, “What you see here, these are all models of things you can do…The fact that Santa Barbara Unified is doing this is a way for other schools to see that it can be done and here’s how it happened.”

[Superintendent Maldonado and Student Board Representative Erick Gonzalez cut the ribbon to celebrate San Marcos’s new Mental Wellness Center and the successful implementation of the Culture of Care.  Image Credit: Mary Moses]