From Participation To Preparedness.

Six local educational agencies (Rio School District, Mount Pleasant Elementary School District, Milpitas Unified School District, Sunnyvale School District, San Diego Unified School District and Lake Tahoe Unified School District) and eighteen schools across four California counties were recruited and selected for behavioral health performance management inside the ninety-day window the executed contract ↗ sets (June 23 to September 21, 2026). Every participating LEA meets or exceeds the readiness threshold on all eight indicators the project applied. Readiness assessment is complete at all eighteen sites. Formal participation agreements are fully executed at all six LEAs.

The Five Findings The Commission Should Take From This Report

One. Recruitment succeeded on availability, not on capacity. Every district contacted during the May to June window had behavioral health capacity, and all five that did not join are CYBHI Fee Schedule participants. What separated the six that joined from the five that did not was leadership stability and an existing agreement relationship with a county office of education. Two of the five non-joining districts were mid-superintendent-search. Capacity was abundant; availability was scarce.

Two. Site-level attribution of BHSSA funding could not be established, and that is the project’s justification rather than its failure. The solicitation asked that participating schools be recipients of BHSSA funding. Every one of the six LEAs sits inside a county BHSSA or MHSSA-funded service system. Almost none can produce a document naming which of its schools the money reached. County offices and consortium structures distribute the funding without publishing site-level allocation. Current reporting structures provide visibility into these programs at the county and consortium level, and BHPM creates an opportunity to connect that investment information to the sites where implementation occurs, which is what a performance management system adds.

Three. Technology is not the constraint anywhere. All six LEAs run a modern student information system with Clever single sign-on live in production. Device coverage is 1:1 at every site where it has been confirmed. Not one site’s readiness turns on infrastructure. What varies, and what determines whether an administration runs cleanly, is schedule: whether the site already holds a block of time it can give.

Four. More systematic screening and more developed tier routing appear together. The cohort points to a trend worth watching. Sites with an operating screener tend to route findings into a more clearly documented, multi-tiered system of support, while sites without a universal instrument tend to show a less formal connection between existing student supports and their tier structure. The two appear together rather than one clearly preceding the other, and BHPM creates an opportunity to test that relationship longitudinally as screening and routing are implemented across the cohort.

Five. What stands in the way is scheduled time and a routine for reading results. Completed readiness assessments converge on the same two variables, and neither is money nor technology. Board-adopted behavioral health investment across the six districts exceeds $21 million a year, and every site runs a modern student information system with single sign-on live in production, so neither purse nor platform sets the pace. Across the cohort, most sites lack a formalized, standing structure for reading behavioral health data against goals under a named owner, and the sites projected to administer most cleanly are the ones that already hold a block of time they can give. A slot on the calendar and a structured routine for reading results are what this project has to supply, and they are what distinguishes a screener from a performance management system.

The Cohort · Six LEAs, Eighteen Schools

Eighteen schools in six districts and four counties. Enrollment and demographics are the California School Dashboard ↗ 2025 release; each school name links to its own Dashboard report.

How The Cohort Is Composed

Four counties across four distinct regional economies: Ventura on the coastal agricultural plain, Santa Clara across the urban and suburban South Bay, San Diego on the southern border, and El Dorado in the Sierra Nevada. The geography stretches roughly five hundred miles. Three LEAs sit in Santa Clara County, reflecting the prime contractor’s network; the other three were reached through partner relationships that extend beyond it.

By grade band the eighteen sites divide into four elementary schools, seven middle schools, five high schools, and two TK-8 campuses. Enrollment at participating sites ranges from 105 at Calaveras Hills to 2,926 at Milpitas High, a factor of twenty-eight. Socioeconomic disadvantage ranges from 21.1 to 82.4 percent, English learner concentration from 3.1 to 44.7 percent, and students with disabilities from 8.1 to 20.2 percent. Sixteen of the nineteen participating school entities hold Title I schoolwide status.

Five participating LEAs are funded through the Local Control Funding Formula. Sunnyvale School District is community-funded (Basic Aid), operating on excess local property tax at $7,263 per pupil above its LCFF entitlement. That single difference matters for sustainability findings: arguments resting on LCFF supplemental and concentration dollars do not apply in a Basic Aid district, and including one means the project’s conclusions about cost and funding source hold in both environments rather than only the more common one.