Taylor Community Schools, which will lose its partnership with Community Howard Regional Health after the end of the school year, will turn to another community partner to provide mental health support for students.
The Taylor School Board on Wednesday approved an agreement with 4C Health to provide the district with a clinician with mental health skills.
The partnership comes after Community Health notified last year that Taylor Eastern Kokomo & Western would end some free services it provided to schools. This includes athletic trainers and mental health skills clinicians.
Schools can also re-use community health services, but must then pay the salaries of their staff. This was a high cost that schools were unwilling to pay, estimated at $474,000 in Western University's case, forcing school officials to look elsewhere.
4C Health will provide Taylor with one clinician with mental health skills. They work with students to learn behavioral, coping, and regulatory skills. Superintendent Steve Dishon said this is based on need, so if more students need services, 4C will provide more staff.
The deal is free for Taylor, except for a small fee the district pays to allow non-Medicaid students to receive the service.
“It's trivial compared to Community Howard. They charged us $80,000 and were going to file an insurance claim on top of that,” Dishon said. “I didn't mean to do that.”
This situation is particularly distressing for school officials, as the loss of mental health jobs was not anticipated. It was known in advance that Community Health would end its sports training services.
A Community Health spokesperson told the Tribune earlier this year that rising reimbursement and costs have required restructured contracts with schools to help them absorb the costs.
School officials said they were told that changing laws were part of the reason.
Some school administrators say they do not pay community health services for their services, but can refer students to health networks if they are injured during a sports day, for example. In this scenario, students become community health patients.
Howard County schools aren't the only schools to lose affiliation with the hospital network. Schools in Grant and Clinton counties are also having to look elsewhere for athletic trainers.
The Maconaquah School Corporation was abolished by the Regional Health Department in 2022. The district still lacks a formal athletic trainer.
4C health staff will work with community health staff at Taylor to take over services by the end of the school year. Dishon said Community Howard stopped referrals several months ago.
“I feel like we can have a good relationship,” he said. “But basically the community has checked out, so we can't wait any longer.”
