Frederica Freyberg:

Governor Tony Evers declared 2025 the “year of the kid” and his two-year budget called for more than $300 million in direct spending on school mental health treatment and staffing. Last night, the Joint Finance Committee approved $20 million in one-time funding to expand K-12 mental health programs. Meanwhile, a bill in the legislature calls for a two-year pilot program in two schools in Wisconsin providing wraparound, school-centered mental health services, even through the summer break. Senate author of the bill, Republican Senator Jesse James of Thorp, joins us with more. And thanks a lot for being here.

Jesse James:

Thank you for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

So you’ve said that advocacy for youth mental health is your number one priority. Why the urgency on that?

Jesse James:

So, well, it comes from my personal life. It comes from my outside career of this building. As a law enforcement officer, as well as what I’ve seen with and heard from constituents from my district and from across the state. The impacts that we’ve seen in our mental health, behavioral health crises that our youth have been experiencing across our state have been on the rise. And I’ve dealt personally more with more youth in crisis than I have adults in my law enforcement capacity over the last five years where I work as a part time police officer in the village of Cadott. So that that raised some concerns for me. And, you know, our state does okay when it comes to these crises, whether it’s adult or youth, but I think trying to get our youth the services, resources, education, prevention, coping strategies, everything that they need as a youth that they can mature and grow into, into the young adult life will set them up for success in the future as they continue to reside in our state.

Frederica Freyberg:

So the school centered pilot program proposed would provide wraparound mental health services in two schools. What would that look like?

Jesse James:

So in two schools, one would be urban, semi-urban school, and the other one would be a rural school. You know, the things that happen up in the village of Cadott happen in the city of Milwaukee. And I think the key element to this is the data collecting. There will be a report that will be — have to be submitted from whoever were to receive the grant funding for this, and they have to provide a report back. And that’s some of the issues that we have in our state is the lack of information sharing. We — the schools do a good job tracking it, but at the state level, none of that information is shared. So we would have to personally go to each of our school districts to find out what’s going on with mental health. How many students are impacted by it, whether it’s elementary, middle school, high school, and without that data, it’s very hard for us as a legislature to make decisions moving forward. We can just say, “yeah, there’s a problem,” but we just throw money at it with no data reporting or collecting. That’s a foolish — that’s a foolish decision in my opinion.

Frederica Freyberg:

And so what would those wraparound services look like?

Jesse James:

Well, it’s huge and the key element to this is that the parents are involved and then also the community buy in is there as well with the partnerships and collaboration. But the wraparound, it’s a yearlong process. It’s not just during the school year where when the children are in crisis, they’re receiving the services and resources available to them. This is a yearlong process. It even continues on through the summertime to where those continued treatment options are available to the youth and the family.

Frederica Freyberg:

So I understand that an agency like Lutheran Social Services could hold the contract to provide the program, and there are estimates there that it would cost about $850,000 over two years. In the end of those two years, if this proves super successful, how could it be paid for in more schools than two across the state?

Jesse James:

Well, that’s, that’s a good question. I think we’re still waiting to see what’s happening at the federal level, with all the decisions being made there. You know, this is our attempt at the state level to implement something so that we can see the figures. We can get the data. Once we get that kind of reporting done, and we, as a legislature, and the stakeholders interested in this topic, this issue, we can bring forth further decisions, further funding, further modifications that would need to be taken place. I mean, this is going to be a continued work in progress.

Frederica Freyberg:

Is there some concern on the part of lawmakers that just a lot of money is thrown at these, you know, at mental health programs again, without the return of the evidence-based success? Is that kind of what’s partly driving the idea here?

Jesse James:

100%. So last session, I’ve had superintendents in my office during budget talks this spring and summer here to where last session, they just funneled out a whole bunch of dollars to our school districts. One school district received $4,000. That’s not going to pay for staff. That’s not going to, you know, get what that school district may need to provide mental health services to their students. Now, I did share options with them, but for example, that school district, they had a guest speaker come in and talk to the students. So we can do better. With that funding, they didn’t have — they didn’t have to report back on what they use that money for. And that was every school district in our state. There’s something wrong with that. We need to know how our dollars are being spent, the impact that it’s having in our schools, especially when it comes to our youth. So there’s things that we can do. It’s all about communication, negotiation and compromise.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right, all right. Well, we leave it there. Senator Jesse James, thank you so much for joining us.

Jesse James:

Thank you for having me. Have a great day.