Editor’s note: This story was updated at 4:35 p.m. on Thursday to include information, which was provided after publication, from a spokesperson at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. It was updated again at 6 p.m. with a response from a Concord School District administrator.
Concord’s school district is still waiting for the federal government to confirm whether it will provide roughly $2.5 million in grant money the district previously won to fund mental health initiatives, an administrator said this week.
Ellen Desmond, the district’s grant manager, called the lack of confirmation “an anomaly.”
“I’m on alert,” she said in an interview Wednesday.
However, on Thursday afternoon, shortly after this story was published, a spokesperson for the agency that supplies the grants told the Concord Monitor that there would be no disruption to the funding.
Danielle Bennett, a spokesperson for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, said that school districts like Concord should expect to receive confirmation of the continuation of their grants by Sept. 30, the last day of the federal fiscal year.
In an apparent contradiction of the status update Concord administrators provided earlier this week, Bennett also said that confirmation letters had in fact already gone out to school districts for one of the two grants. Desmond said later Thursday that the district had yet to receive anything, contrary to what the agency had claimed.
The summer federal funding freeze and the cancellation of other grants have heightened concerns that other sources of federal education funding could be withheld, too. In May, the Trump administration abruptly opted to discontinue $1 billion worth of grants from the Department of Education for mental health services in schools.
The pair of grants that Concord is awaiting word on come from the Department of Health and Human Services’ Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, or SAMHSA. Concord was set to receive a total of roughly $11 million over a five-year period through the two grants, according to Desmond.
One of the two grants, which began in 2023, covers Concord’s collaboration with Riverbend Community Mental Health Center, which provides mental health services in schools. It also funds teacher and staff training and a variety of positions, including a home-to-school liaison.
The other grant, which began last year, funds Project AWARE, a youth mental health program in Concord, Manchester and Laconia schools.
Eighty-six students were referred to school-based counseling and 25 were provided community services through the Riverbend grant during the 2023-24 school year, according to Fern Seiden, the district’s director of student and staff wellness. In its first year, the Project AWARE grant funded a new advisory program at Concord’s middle school and small group interventions for 375 students, she said.
“We know that if students are in a place where they are able to learn, then the academics can be impacted in a positive way,” Desmond said. “If we’re able to teach kids emotional regulation – support that teaching – then that impacts their ability to learn.”
Desmond said she has repeatedly inquired about the status of the grants with the government administrators assigned to them, including as recently as earlier this week.
Desmond also alerted Sen. Maggie Hassan’s office earlier this week of the district’s growing unease about the status of the funding. Sen. Hassan said in a statement that her office has reached out to the Department of Health and Human Services “and urged them to immediately provide” it.
“The uncertainty surrounding this funding from the Trump Administration puts critical mental health resources and supports for students at risk,” she said.
The terms of the grants indicate that recipients should expect to continue to receive the funding over the course of the multi-year grant period as long as they meet the grant’s goals, which Desmond said Concord is doing.
Desmond said the district isn’t “in panic mode” yet but acknowledged that they’ve begun to make contingency plans. She said it would be premature to share details on what those plans entail or what could be cut if the grants don’t come through.
“I would just say that we are clear on what our priorities are and our funding will follow those priorities,” she said.
The uncertainty on the mental health grants comes as state departments of education and school districts continue to feel the repercussions of the monthlong federal funding freeze that occurred in July.
In New Hampshire, roughly 8% of education spending is funded through federal sources, according to the state’s Department of Education.
In a typical year without a funding freeze, federal formula-based grants – which are distinct from competitive grants, like those through the mental health agency – become available to school districts on July 1. This year, as a result of the freeze, Concord didn’t gain access to those funds until early this month, Desmond said.
This year has thrown school districts another curveball, as well. Instead of providing them access to all money for the year at once, the state has released only 41% of it, according to Desmond.
“It definitely came as a surprise,” she said.
The partial release of the entitlement program funds has required Concord to prorate certain annual expenses. Desmond said she expects the second installment to become available in October.
Counting the two mental health grants, Concord anticipated receiving roughly $7 million in federal and state grants this year. Its budget for the year is $112 million.