I am writing in response to the Jan. 7, 2026, article titled “Ward 8 Education Leaders and Community-Based Organizations Counter Proposed Changes to School-Based Mental Health Programming.” The article described the D.C. Department of Behavioral Health’s (DBH) plan to phase out contracts over the next two years for community-based organizations (CBOs) to provide school-based mental health services. As the School-Based Mental Health Director and a former school-based mental health therapist at Mary’s Center, I appreciate The Washington Informer reporting on this important issue. Community-based organizations like Mary’s Center bring continuity, trust, and integrated care to school-based mental health services — assets that cannot be replicated through direct government provision alone.
Mary’s Center has 22 clinicians, each working full time at one of our partner schools providing individual, group, and family therapy, conducting quarterly workshops for parents and teachers, providing crisis intervention support, consulting with teachers about student progress, running skill-building groups, and facilitating weekly prevention activities. Since Mary’s Center’s inception as a small clinic in 1988 to now operating as a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) serving 65,000 people per year, we have garnered deep community trust as we have grown to meet changing community needs and serve patients with dignity and in a culturally responsive manner. Our social change model means that we are dedicated to connecting participants to an array of services based on their situation, including medical and dental care, public benefits and insurance enrollment assistance, domestic violence services, English-language classes, and so on. We also connect our students to our child and adolescent psychiatry service providers with whom we work closely. Because children and families can access all these services in the same place, their providers can collaborate to improve outcomes, reduce disparities, and increase efficiency of care. This level of collaboration would be lost if services were taken away from CBOs.
One of our school-based therapists had a complex case that illustrated the benefit of interconnected, holistic services. She received a referral from the school’s wellness team for a student who struggled with disruptive and antagonizing behaviors. Once therapy began, the student disclosed physical abuse and domestic violence occurring in the home, and a Child and Family Services Agency (CFSA) case was opened. The therapist quickly connected the student’s older sibling to our school-based therapist in their school. The therapist worked closely with the student’s mother to build trust and personally introduce her to our internal domestic violence advocate, case manager, and her own individual therapist. She also connected the mother to our home visiting program to support her youngest child, as well as perinatal, medical, and dental services, as the children were all overdue for their appointments. As this family was new to the United States and required considerable support accessing and navigating systems in the U.S., a group of seven Mary’s Center providers often worked closely together to coordinate and liaise services. A year after starting services, mother and children were living in a safe home; all children had the services they needed in school and were making great strides academically and socially, and the mother had a more solid support network.
Transitioning the D.C. Department of Behavioral Health School-Based Behavioral Health program away from CBOs would be a massive undertaking that is bound to be incredibly disruptive as current clinicians are pulled out of schools. The proposed plan will reduce the number of CBO contracts from 12 to a maximum of four in school year 2026-27, before removing all CBO positions in school year 2027-28. This would reduce Mary’s Center’s capacity to a quarter of what it was in school year 2024-25, when we served 662 students. Instead, we will only be able to serve an estimated 171 students. It is unclear how services for the remaining three-quarters of students will be transitioned to other providers, if at all. Not only that, but this would also be a loss of years of work that we have done to build relationships, infrastructure, and resources alongside our school partners.
We urge DBH to reconsider their plan. They do not need to end existing successful school-CBO partnerships that have proved to be working very well. The children and families served will feel the direct impact of that decision. Instead, we propose that all stakeholders, including administrators, students, parents, and school leaders, should come to the table together to make data-informed adjustments to our existing system. School-based mental health works best when it is rooted in trust, continuity, and collaboration. Community-based organizations are not a barrier to that vision — we are a cornerstone of it.
Carolyn Greenspan is director of the School-Based Mental Health program at Mary’s Center.