Redwood City School District Mental Health Counseling Program: Year 2 Implementation Study. Executive Summary

In the fall of 2021, Redwood City School District (RCSD) placed a full-time, district-employed mental health counselor in each of its twelve schools in order to bolster district capacity to support student mental health and wellbeing. Stanford's John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities (Gardner Center) conducted a Year 1 Implementation Study and followed up with a Year 2 Implementation Study to further document the evolution of the counseling program and its areas of impact. Focusing on data collected through interviews with faculty, staff, and administrators, the Year 2 study investigated three research questions: (1) What is the role of RCSD's school-based mental health counselors?; (2) What are early signals or "lead indicators" of the value or impact of the counseling program?; and (3) What considerations might further improve the program as it moves into Year 3? This report is an executive summary to the research brief. [This work is generously funded by Stanford's Office of the Provost through the Office of Community Engagement.]