After shootings, Texas poured $5M into unproven program

Records show effort to ID at-risk students fell far short of goals

AUSTIN — Texas lawmakers reacted to a rash of mass shootings, including one at Santa Fe High School, by pouring $5 million this year into expanding a small telemedicine project out of the Panhandle that screens students at risk of hurting themselves or others and refers them to help.

But records obtained by the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News show that the project housed at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center hasn’t lived up to its own targets.

Few of the more than 200 students screened since mid-2013 followed through with their aftercare plans for counseling or medication, the project’s grant filings and interviews with school districts indicate.

What’s more, the virtual referrals have come at an average cost of about $11,600 per student — more than what the state pays school districts to educate a child for a full year.

Summer Martin, president of the Lone Star State School Counselor Association, said Texas could be using that money to boost the number of school counselors in a state where there’s an average of 1 for every 430 students.

“Don’t get me wrong, we need the help for sure,” she said. “But that could have gone to school counselors who could have gotten a lot more resources to those students for a much smaller price tag.”

It remains to be seen how the project — known as the Telemedicine, Wellness, Intervention, Triage and Referral Project, or TWITR — will use the additional $5 million to expand beyond a dozen school districts in the Lubbock area.

Lawmakers dedicated the money at the recommendation of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, whose office has funded the project since its inception with more than $2 million in grants.

The program was launched in response to a pair of massacres in 2012: a theater shooting in Aurora, Colo., that killed 12 people and

the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Conn., that left 20 children and six adults dead.

Abbott’s spokesman, John Wittman, said TWITR has been a success.

Wittman called the average cost-per-student — calculated by dividing the grant funding by the number of students screened — a “simple math trick” that “does not accurately capture the effort to implement a pilot project of this nature in West Texas with a lack of available mental health services.”

“There are documented instances where students have been identified through this screening process that intended to commit acts of violence against fellow students, faculty or themselves,” said Wittman, who referred further questions to Texas Tech. “TWITR does not conduct its own psychiatric care and is intended to identify students that need mental health care to protect those students and improve the overall safety of participating ISDs.”

The project’s successes sometimes have involved the police.

In grant filings and public statements, TWITR officials highlighted 25 times when a student deemed dangerous or suicidal was removed from the classroom and sent to juvenile detention, another school or a hospital.

In one case, a student was detained by a school resource officer, and a search uncovered a note, map, names and plans to purchase a handgun, the project reported to the governor’s office in 2017.

In another case, a suicidal student left school grounds and was quickly found by a school resource officer. The student was sent to a juvenile detention facility, the project reported.

It’s not clear when — or if — the children returned to the classroom, which should be the goal, said Annalee Gulley, director of public policy and government affairs at Mental Health America of Greater Houston.

“All communities, all students and all youth are better served when nonviolent youth are able to return to campus following rehabilitation,” she said.

Kendra Burris, vice president for external relations at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, said the project is one tool to address student mental health and its value shouldn’t be judged by the number of students screened, but rather by the thousands of children in West Texas who have access to TWITR in their schools.

Burris noted that TWITR staff don’t have the power to remove a student from school; only administrators or parents do.

During this year’s legislative session, state lawmakers — responding to the 2018 shooting at Santa Fe High in which 10 people died — scrambled to boost school safety by investing $100 million in building upgrades such as bulletproof glass and by expanding student access to mental health services.

Schools also will be allowed to have an unlimited number of armed staff to help guard against shootings.

The $5 million to expand TWITR was part of that package.

School staff refer students to the project, and parents must give permission for their children to participate.

A child psychiatrist screens students during two telemedicine appointments, which the child’s parent or guardian must attend.

After the screening, the psychiatrist can refer students for inperson visits, recommend medication or direct them to counseling.

School districts say the project quickly connects students with psychiatric care in rural areas where services are scarce and wait times can be long.

Abbott trumpeted the program as a statewide model in a school safety plan his office rolled out after the Santa Fe shooting last year.

Education advocates agree the idea is a good one but question the cost and effectiveness.

No students who participated in TWITR during its first four years complied with aftercare plans, the project reported to the governor’s office. Texas Tech left that number off of its grant reports in the past two years.

Burris said it’s hard to track what happens to a student after a referral is made due to health care privacy laws.

“As we develop this project plan, our goal is really to focus on the access, to give the student the access,” she said. “We found it was a lot harder to track the afterplan.”

School administrators said follow-through depends largely on the parents. Even families that agree to participate may not have the time or money to ensure their kids receive the recommended care, especially in rural areas where a clinic may be far away.

Of the 15 students at Frenship ISD referred to the TWITR project last school year, about half have followed through with the recommended care, administrators said.

The project helps the school make a quick connection to a psychiatrist once a student’s situation is “over our counselors’ heads,” said Richard Dean, executive director of administrative services at Frenship.

“To me, it’s about the welfare of the student,” he said, “not about whether he is going to be the next school shooter or not.”