Mansfield School System Receiving State Mental Health Grant

MANSFIELD, CT — Gov. Ned Lamont Thursday announced that Mansfield is one of 20 school districts across Connecticut being awarded $5 million in funding under a competitive state grant program that will be used for hiring and maintaining school mental health workers during the 2023, 2024, and 2025 school years.

Mansfield is to receive:

• $89,500 in 2023
• $89,500 in 2024
• $62,650 in 2025

Administered by the Connecticut State Department of Education, the School Mental Health Workers Grant is funded by money the state received from the federal American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA, which was approved by Congress in 2021 in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

The awards announced this week represents totals for the first of three rounds of grants aimed at increasing the number of mental health workers in schools that are being administered by the state using ARPA funding. A second round – the School Mental Health Specialists Grant – will soon provide grants totaling $15 million. A third grant program will provide $8 million to summer camps and school-based summer programming for mental health support.

Awards for each district under this first round range between $101,973 and $324,000. Priority was given to districts with a high ratio of students to school mental health workers and a high rate of student use of school mental health services, Lamont said.