School teachers and staff in select Central Valley school districts are now eligible to receive fully covered online mental health services, according to a newly announced partnership between participating school districts, community nonprofit Legacy Health Endowment and the mental health clinic Lavender Psychiatry.

“We know that the well-being of our students starts with the well-being of our educators,” said Jeffrey Lewis, president and CEO of Legacy Health Endowment. “Teachers, school staff and their families are the bedrock of our community, and the stresses they face today are immense.”

The partnership “allows us to deliver timely, compassionate, and high-quality support directly to these essential professionals and their families when they need it most,” Lewis said.

The new partnership expands a pilot program, which initially provided free behavioral health care to school employees in the Denair, Hughson and Keyes school districts in Stanislaus County back in April. Teachers, administrators, custodians and support staff, as well as their adult family members who live in 19 designated ZIP codes in Stanislaus and Merced counties, can register for services by visiting a program portal through their district administration, according to the announcement.

The program aims to address soaring rates of teacher burnout, stress and poor teacher retention, alongside a student mental health crisis that has worsened since the pandemic. A 2022 survey found that 1 in 5 teachers in California say they will likely leave the profession in the next three years, citing stress-related burnout, political attacks on teachers and heavy workload.

“The Covid-19 pandemic underscored the resilience of school employees who had to adapt to distance learning,” Lewis said in April. “However, many have not fully recovered.”

About the Author

Vani Sanganeria covers student health and wellbeing as EdSource’s Local News Fellow, a partnership with the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.