“Superintendent, will you commit to working with PEACE to create a plan for students and/or our parents to easily access needed mental health support?” Delphine Kendrick of Hurst Chapel AME in Winter Haven asked Polk County Public Schools Superintendent Fred Heid at the 26th Annual Nehemiah Action on April 20.
The request was the culmination of almost a year’s worth of work by the Polk Ecumenical Action Council for Empowerment (PEACE), said Christine Goding, who has been involved with the organization through St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Lakeland since 2001.
Beginning last September in House Meetings, PEACE asked its 23 member congregations, “What’s keeping you up at night? What are you praying about right now?” Goding said. A common theme emerged: Many young people across Polk County are struggling with their mental health.
The research
After choosing a focus for this year, the Nehemiah Action steering committee met with experts in behavioral health services at Lakeland Regional Health, Central Florida Health Care, Polk County Public Schools (PCPS), and the Early Learning Coalition of Polk County.
“We learned that our children are struggling with their mental health care now more than ever,” Goding told the crowd. “Kids have lots of stresses, including technology, less face-to-face time with others, and bullying. 34% of Polk students report feeling sad or helpless — 34% — that’s one in three of our kids.”
Data from the 2024 Florida Youth Substance Abuse Survey found that 46.2% of youth aged 10 to 17 in Polk County felt depressed or sad most days. Statewide, 40.7% of students report these feelings.
Goding said the steering committee talked to providers who treated students as young as four years old and said that students as young as preschool-age are being expelled due to behavioral health issues. She said families shared stories about children who experienced depression after being bullied and parents who felt helpless when trying to help their struggling children.
The committee also identified positive trends. The number of behavioral/mental health professionals and licensed mental health counselors in Polk County has improved steadily since 2016. Goding said that in the last decade, Lakeland Regional Health reported a 30% drop in Baker Acts — when a person is held voluntarily or involuntarily for up to 72 hours for their safety and the safety of those around them.
Officials with PCPS said in an email that the district has increased mental health staffing levels by 30% over the past five years. They said that more that 84% of school‑based staff are trained in Youth Mental Health First Aid to strengthen early identification and response efforts, and for more than three years, the district has partnered with Hazel Health to expand access to telehealth mental health services, including virtual counseling and crisis support.
But PEACE said there is more work to be done.
“When we met with the Polk County Schools mental health team, they made it clear that access alone isn’t enough. Their greatest challenge is that many parents still don’t know how to navigate the system or where to turn for help. Too often, care exists, but families can’t connect to it,” Goding said.
“The district has mental health facilitators, behavior interventionists, social workers, psychologists, nurses, and outreach facilitators, covering more than 120 schools in our county,” she said. “We want to make sure that every student facing challenges has a clear, accessible path to connect with their school’s mental health team so their needs can be properly assessed and the right support put in place.”
The demand
At least 850 people from churches throughout Polk County packed the First United Methodist Church of Lakeland for the Nehemiah Action on April 20 when PEACE made its public request of PCPS.
“We want to show the community and leaders that there are people deeply invested and concerned about the issue that we’re bringing up,” Goding said. “And so that’s why we bring a lot of people to the meeting, to make it a community meeting, to show our people power to the elected leaders, and to make it be a public yes or no.”
Heid immediately committed to working with PEACE to continue to improve access to youth mental health services. He said this was “probably the easiest negotiation I’ve ever had to do.”
Polk County Public Schools Superintendent Fred Heid takes the stage at the 26th Annual Nehemiah Action on April 20. | Anna Toms, LkldNow“If you look at our five major objectives and goals, developing a whole child is one of those missions,” Heid told the crowd. “And we’re very pleased that we continue to strive to do this because until a student feels safe in a school, learning cannot and will not occur.”
Heid said the district has focused on improving student mental health over the past few years and multiple resources are available to families.
PCPS follows a comprehensive Multi‑Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) that provides mental health interventions across three tiers: school-wide prevention and resiliency‑building; short-term intervention with targeted small group and brief individual support; and intensive, individualized services like ongoing counseling, crisis response, and coordinated care for students with significant or complex needs. “Interventions are evidence‑based, including trauma‑informed care, cognitive behavioral strategies, solution‑focused approaches, and Motivational Interviewing,” district officials said.
“We have all those things,” Heid said, “but when you ask people in the community, they don’t know a thing.”
A gap in awareness
After the event, Heid said the district will need to emphasize communication, messaging, and getting information into the hands of the people who need it most. He said he and the board agree, “The website can only do so much.”
The need extends beyond parents and guardians who support students from home. Polk Vision’s 2024 Polk County Behavioral Health Gap Analysis found that “Awareness of currently available mental health-related resources within the PCPS system varies tremendously. Some school-based staff have comprehensive knowledge, while others have only a basic understanding.”
School Board Member Lisa Miller, who was also in attendance, agreed that the district needs to prioritize connecting families to resources and following up.
“You have to meet the students where they are, and a lot of our kids need the support,” Miller said. “And to be successful and independently living and gainfully employed … you have to help them early — early intervention.”
A personal testimony
At the Nehemiah Action, Aubrey Warren, 20, shared her experience as a Polk County Public School student who was “Baker Acted” for the first time as a sophomore in high school.
“There were no available beds in Lakeland at the time, so instead of getting help close to home, I was sent over an hour away to a facility in Orlando,” Warren said. “I was transported in a car with bars on the windows. I was terrified. I was only 15 years old.”
Warren said that when she returned, only the principal, guidance counselor, and one teacher knew what she had experienced. Despite the counselor’s support, who met with Warren weekly and provided her with a safe space in her office, she was also “Baker Acted” as a senior.
“Again, I came back to school carrying something that I didn’t know how to talk about. I was embarrassed,” Warren said. “I didn’t want people to know.” She said she tried to confide in a teacher, but the teacher didn’t understand what it meant to have been “Baker Acted.”
Warren nearly lost her acceptance at the University of South Florida as a result of her mental health struggles. “In order to get my acceptance back to USF, I had to write them a letter explaining what I had been through,” Warren said. “I had to put some of the hardest moments of my life onto paper and send it in, hoping that someone would understand. And thankfully, they did.”
She is currently completing her junior year at USF.
“Students like me are not lazy. We are not unmotivated, but we are overwhelmed, and we are trying our best with what we carry,” Warren said.
“No student should have to struggle in silence. No student should lose opportunities because they didn’t feel safe enough to seek help. We need more support, more trained staff, and more spaces where students feel safe to speak up before things reach a crisis point. I’m standing here today because I made it through, but there are so many students who are in the middle of it, and they deserve better.”
