PHOTO BY ABBY KOCH/MARSHALLTOWN COMMUNITY SCHOOL DISTRICT Director of Student Services Anel Garza seeks school board approval for a grant that will allow the district to hire three school-based therapists for a five-year period. The therapists would be assigned to Lenihan Intermediate, Miller Middle School and Marshalltown High School.

A grant awarded to the Marshalltown Community School District (MCSD) will allow three schools to hire one school-based therapist.

Director of Student Services Anel Garza got approval for the $25,000 School-Based Healthcare Solutions (SBHCN) Network Principal Student Support Services Grant from the school board at the regular Monday night meeting.

“Part of the process of accepting the award is approval from the board that we are wanting the grant to move forward,” she said. “Once this is in place, we will take the next steps to implement the process of hiring the therapists.”

With the grant, the district will employ the therapists, called transitional coaches, for Lenihan Intermediate, Miller Middle School and Marshalltown High School for a period of five years. The transitional coaches would primarily work with the most at-risk students, and it will help the district with families who do not have insurance.

Superintendent Theron Schutte commended Garza and her staff for finding ways to provide such services to MCSD students.

“This topic continues to be one of the priority topics . . . of our legislative platform,” he said. “Yet, the funding oftentimes is unavailable to help support it. If and when the funding is, a lot of times, the person power, people hired to provide the services . . . hasn’t been strong. So, it’s exciting not only that you found a way to provide three people full-time to provide these services, but it’s for a five-year period, as well.”

Board Member Leah Stanley asked how it would impact the arrangements the district has with external mental health providers. She asked if they would be able to reduce the dependency through the grant.

Garza said she did not know what the impact might be but wants to continue partnerships with agencies.

“Because there might be a point where our school-based therapists reach a point where it might be more of a home issue, and we would want to transition that student over to a community agency where they can continue the support needed as a family,” she said.

Schutte said what he has seen happen is a realignment where services are provided.

“I would think with many of our community agencies, they would want to sustain the relationships they’ve already developed with kids and families they’ve been working with,” he said. “But if we’re able to more significantly support at the intermediate and secondary level with these positions, we might be able to provide more support at the elementary levels, as well. We have been pretty strong there prior to the pandemic . . . and that kind of shifted to secondary, because they stayed with people they were already working with.”

Schutte said the need for such services is greater than the resources available to the MCSD.

Garza said there has been no indication of renewing the grant, but is confident more guidance will be given once the therapists get closer to the five-year mark.

She added that the hiring process for the three positions will be a little different for the district.

“As part of the grant, [SBHCN is] going to be very hands-on in screening and vetting all of the school-based therapists because they want to make sure . . . [therapists] are meeting the criteria for the grant requirements,” Garza said. “Once they have those people filtered out, they will provide us with the names to proceed with the interview process. At that point, we will be very transparent that this is a grant and only a five-year commitment at this point.”

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Contact Lana Bradstream at 641-753-6611 ext. 210 or

lbradstream@timesrepublican.com.