Garfield High School, the largest public high school serving Capitol Hill and the Central District, has been awarded a $500,000 grant from the city’s Department of Education and Early Learning to bolster the 23rd Ave campus’s mental health services.

The school says the funding will help add an additional full-time mental health professional based at the Garfield Teen Health Center operated by Seattle Children’s/Odessa Brown Clinic. As part of the grand, University of Washington doctoral students in psychiatry will also do field work at Garfield and a staff member from the Urban League will help manage and coordinate the new resources.

Mental health services funding was a priority in the final budget work of District 3 council member Kshama Sawant before she left office to end the year. CHS reported here on her work to add an amendment to the 2024 budget increase the JumpStart tax on Seattle’s largest companies by $20 million to fund “K-12 educational supports, prioritizing services that improve mental health outcomes.”

Garfield saw increased funding and resources in 2023 in an emergency response from the district and the city over concerns about gun violence around the 23rd Ave campus.

The new mental health funding at Garfield joins resources already in place at five schools that began implementing the DEEL’s Student Mental Health Supports Pilot in the 2022-23 school year: Rainier Beach, Ingraham, and Chief Sealth International high schools, and Denny International and Aki Kurose middle schools.

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