Alhambra Unified School District (AUSD) – Alhambra, CA
AUSD received a Safe Schools/Healthy Students grant in 2008 allowing the district to collaborate with community partners to create a more cohesive infrastructure—Gateways to Success—for early intervention services for students.Through collaborations with community partners, AUSD established a sustainable program that maximized resources to provide services to all AUSD students.
The greatest successes of the initiative were the juvenile diversion process and the establishment of permanent mental health providers. In the juvenile diversion process, parents, schools, and community partners collaborate to create targeted intervention plans to keep students out of the juvenile justice system. Mental health providers provided direct services to juveniles. During the 2013–2014 school year, the Gateway to Success program provided the following:
- One-on-one crisis interventions with more than 530 students
- Evidenced-based classroom curricula for more than 3,700 students
- More than 115 district behavior contracts
- 150 suicide assessments
- Over 2,000 referrals for counseling services
“The Gateways to Success program has become a well-known entity in the community. It has expanded beyond what we ever thought. We are trusted in the community and that matters when it comes to providing mental health services” —Laurel Bear, PhD, Assist. Superintendent of Student/Employee Welfare, Alhambra Unified School District