Please Heed This Warning (Again) On Mental Health Program for Teens Being Used in Seattle Schools

The screener being used is an SBIRT one (Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment) called Check Yourself.  It is being used in most middle schools and some high schools. (All bold mine) 

It is not truly peer-reviewed, the protection of the student data has been questionable, and it does NOT require an accredited and trained mental health professional talk to your child.

It also doesn't require a parent to be notified if your child is referred for additional services if they are 13 and over unless it's a top-tier issue like self-harm or harming others. Washington state law supports this. 

However in the interest of saving you time, here's the bottom line:

- Seattle Schools is using a mental health program for teens that is NOT truly peer-reviewed. 

- I note that students CAN opt out but may feel peer pressure to take the screener. Your child will take the screener with other students in the class sitting right there, and there are reports of students trying to read over each's shoulders. 

I have warned - over and over -that this mental health screener asks very intimate questions about sex, family home life, "crushes" and more. 

- SPS uses very cheery language to parents about Check Yourself. You may not realize that you can opt your child out. You can or your child can. 

- Check Yourself does NOT require and SPS is NOT using all fully-trained and accredited mental health professionals to talk to your child. In fact, in some cases, they are using very questionable staff members.

From the City Journal article that raises deeply troubling issues:

This spring, the Washington Schools Risk Management Pool (WSRMP), which provides liability coverage to more than a third of the state’s school districts, stunned its members with an average premium increase of 45 percent. The primary driver: the rising cost of educator sexual misconduct claims. According to the Department of Education, Washington has one of the highest rates of sexual violence in K–12 schools nationwide.

The problem isn’t that Washington public schools don’t know how to prevent educator sexual misconduct. It’s that many are choosing not to—in part by participating in Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SB-SBIRT), a school-based behavioral health program implemented in more than 60 King County middle and high schools across 13 school districts. Seattle Public Schools is a major participant: SB-SBIRT operates in all 12 of the district’s comprehensive middle schools and nine of its high schools. Since its launch in 2018, the program has screened more than 75,000 students.

Yet Washington State knows what effective child abuse prevention looks like. State law, district policies, and WSRMP’s own resources provide clear guidance that aligns with federal standards and the recommendations of leading child abuse experts. Schools must recognize the signs of sexual grooming, intervene appropriately, and ensure that staff maintain clear professional boundaries. 

Staff should not single out students for special attention, meet alone with them out of the view of others, become confidants, disclose personal problems, or communicate beyond legitimate school business. By implementing these guidelines, youth-serving groups like the YMCA and Boy Scouts of America have successfully reduced the rate of sexual abuse within their organizations.

About Seattle Schools, here's the continuation of the City Journal article:

According to Seattle Public Schools, schools participating in SB-SBIRT administer the controversial Check Yourself questionnaire to students in sixth through tenth grade, screening for psychological issues, substance use, “gender identity” confusion, and other “risk factors.” A “Prevention and Intervention (P&I) Specialist” then reviews the completed questionnaires and “connect[s] with students” whose responses indicate “a potential need” for “additional support.”

Roughly half of all participants are flagged for a “brief intervention”: this involves one to eight “semi-structured” private “encounters” designed to establish the P&I specialist as the student’s “trusted adult.” In practice, these one-on-one meetings are often “ongoing,” according to the district.

Public descriptions of the P&I role are misleading. Grant documents state that the SB-SBIRT program “will be staffed by licensed behavioral health specialists.” However, SB-SBIRT team members often lack professional qualifications—though they are required to have “[k]nowledge of equity and social justice principles and practices,” according to one job posting. 

King County Ombudsman Jeremy Bell has defended the staffing model, arguing that SB-SBIRT should “reflect the community” it serves and citing a “pro-equity basis for not requiring specific licensure or clinical training.”

Parents, should the need for equity in job hiring trump your child's mental health needs? Shame on King County. 

That “pro-equity basis” has inspired many poor policy and staffing decisions. Louis Eaglestaff, for example, has been arrested at least nine times (most recently in April 2026) and has multiple criminal convictions, primarily for drug- and alcohol-related offenses. In 2016, he also faced criminal charges for property destruction in a domestic-violence case. Eaglestaff is currently in his third year as a middle school P&I specialist.

Criminal records are not the only concern. Tavar Proctor previously worked as a P&I Specialist at Franklin High School, where he also coached basketball. His online presence raises serious questions about whether he was an appropriate candidate to work with adolescents—and whether schools are following recommended screening practices. 

WSRMP’s (Washington Schools Risk Management Pool) latest sexual abuse prevention guidance, obtained through a public records request, advises member districts to identify “trustworthy candidates” for “employees and high-access volunteers” by supplementing traditional hiring practices with “social media checks”—a “background screening solution” that compiles applicants’ “problematic online conduct,” including “sexually explicit material.” 

Yet Proctor’s public Instagram account, which is followed by high school students, is littered with explicit and disturbing content, including photographs of nude women, jokes about rape, sexual assault, and domestic violence, rank misogyny, and numerous posts expressing admiration for R. Kelly and Chris Brown. Internal emails between Seattle Public Schools administrators overseeing SB-SBIRT, obtained through a public-records request, document ongoing problems with Proctor’s conduct.

Asked about Eaglestaff and Proctor, a spokesperson for Seattle Public Schools told me that “the district conducted hiring due diligence consistent with its policies,” including background checks and criminal-history disclosure reviews, and “did not identify a basis that would have disqualified either individual from employment.”

About Mr. Proctor, I have emails between Lisa Davidson who is the head of Prevention and Intervention in SPS and Christina R. Posted, who was a middle school principal at that time. Posten is asking for help with her Prevention and Intervention specialist, Tavar Proctor. 

The first one was from April 2019 from Christina R. that was posted to Lisa Davidson.

We are struggling with Tavar. He is constantly on his phone, is not proactive, does not step up to help when we’re in need, and often receives redirects about using his phone in the halls. We are a no cell phone school.

What are some guidelines for how I can support him and hold him accountable? I’m hearing that this position may increase to full time. How is this decision being made?

Another email was sent in May 2019 from Posten to Davidson:

Can you please provide some guidance? Our issues continue. Can I assign him some roles? If he doesn’t follow through, what are my channels?

Even leaving aside these dubious hires, the P&I specialist role itself appears to conflict with Washington’s sexual abuse prevention guidance. WSRMP calls “Special Relationships” between staff and students the “essence” of sexual grooming; SB-SBIRT calls them a “protective factor”—indeed, the “intended outcome” of its brief intervention. P&I specialists are expected to discuss “sensitive” and “uncomfortable” subjects with students during a brief intervention, including their Check Yourself responses about sexuality and who they are “most likely to have a crush on.” 

Mr. Proctor is no longer a P&I specialist. Nope, SPS hired him as a basketball coach at Franklin High School. First he was the girls coach and then he was the coach for the boys team. At the end of 2025, he was forced out of that position as well. 

By contrast, WSRMP considers discussions of “sexual topics that are not related to a specific curriculum” an “inappropriate boundary invasion.” It also warns staff against disclosing personal information to students, while SB-SBIRT teaches specialists that “sharing a piece of themselves” helps “build trust and a sense of care.”

An SB-SBIRT “Implementation Playbook,” for example, provides a sample system for tracking brief interventions but does not require its use, saying interventionists will “usually” report such data and instructing schools to determine how it will be documented.

Schools, not the district? I have questions. 

The solution to Washington’s rising sexual-misconduct liability problems is fewer victims, not fewer lawsuits.

For me, I continue to believe that this is just a lawsuit waiting to happen. And this is why the costs for SPS to get insurance continue to rise. This is EXACTLY how SPS gets itself in trouble.



Two BIG pieces of information that you should understand upfront:

1) While the HIPAA Privacy Rule typically controls release of health information created by health care professionals, the HIPAA Privacy rule explicitly excludes from its purview health records that are part of an “education record” as that is defined under FERPA.53 FERPA defines “education record” in a way that sometimes can include health records created by a health care provider—such as a school nurse—employed by or acting on behalf of a school or university.

Thus, health records created by medical professionals employed by a school or university may be part of an “education record” and subject to FERPA rather than HIPAA.

HIPAA and FERPA do NOT overlap; it's one or the other.

For example, if your child accesses services in a student health center in a school, that data is considered part of your child's educational record that you as a parent CANNOT access. You are given an information sheet in your beginning of the school year packet and when you sign for your child to receive services, you are saying you understand you cannot see those records.

So if you say to yourself, "Well, Johnny can get his sports physical right at school, great. Now we don't have to go to the doctor to get that done." It also means Johnny can get mental health services or treatment for an STD and you will not be told that happened. (And just to state, better that your child get treatment for an STD than not.)

2) In Washington state:
Minor age 13 or older may consent to outpatient mental health or substance use disorder treatment
Wash. Rev. Code § 71.34.530

Minor age 13 or older may consent to inpatient mental health or substance abuse disorder treatment, subject to judgment of professional in charge of treatment that minor is in need of services provided by the facility, it is not feasible to serve the minor in less restrictive setting, and subject to annual renewal of
voluntary consent.

Also in Washington State law:
For clients age 13 to 18, psychologist must clarify limits to confidentiality between the minor & legal guardian at beginning of any service & act in minor client’s best interests in deciding whether to disclose confidential information to legal guardians without minor’s consent.

Wash. Admin. Code §246-924-363(4)

And that's for an accredited and trained mental health professional but SPS is using people who may have very little training. Is that what you want for your child's mental health - a friendly person vs a qualified person?


From the City Journal article:

Two legal developments also preceded the recent wave of multimillion-dollar settlements against Washington school districts, which precipitated WSRMP’s rate hike. 

 

First, in 2020, the Washington Supreme Court ruled in W.H. v. Olympia School District that school districts are strictly liable for employee sexual misconduct. Then, four years later, the state legislature expanded the statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse claims.

WSRMP CEO Deborah Callahan has warned that the resulting rise in legal payouts and insurance premiums is unsustainable. But rather than calling for a plan to prevent sexual abuse in K–12 schools, she has recommended three reforms to reduce districts’ exposure: overturning W.H. v. Olympia School District, eliminating joint liability, and establishing a state compensation fund.

Here's some background info:

- My previous posts on Check Yourself

#1 - https://saveseattleschools.blogspot.com/2018/11/got-middle-schooler-check-this-out.html

#2 - https://saveseattleschools.blogspot.com/2019/02/check-yourself-middle-school-screening.html

#3 - https://saveseattleschools.blogspot.com/2019/03/district-told-by-doe-that-they-are.html

#4 - https://saveseattleschools.blogspot.com/2019/03/check-yourself-screener-for-middle.html

#5 - https://saveseattleschools.blogspot.com/2023/08/sps-news-and-those-back-to-school-forms.html

#6 - https://saveseattleschools.blogspot.com/2024/03/mental-health-records-belonging-to.html

#7 - https://saveseattleschools.blogspot.com/2025/02/tried-to-tell-you-checkyourself-survey.html

#8 - https://saveseattleschools.blogspot.com/2022/08/the-seattle-times-investigative-story.html

- HHS guidance on when parents can consent to a treatment and/or see your child's public school health records.

- American Academy of Pediatrics

A rich evidence base demonstrates that adolescents are more likely to seek health care for potentially sensitive issues such as sexuality, mental health, and drug use if they can provide their own consent and be confident that their health information is private.

However, parents and guardians also have responsibilities pertaining to care for minor patients.

In general, when there is a conflict between the state and federal laws, the state laws take precedence. However, this is not a consistent hierarchy and is complicated by variable state laws.

- From the Center for Adolescent Health and the Law

Many of the requirements of Washington law incorporate or parallel the federal HIPAA Privacy Rule for disclosure of protected health information, but include some stronger protections. Washington laws also contain provisions that are specific to the confidentiality of minors’ health information, particularly with respect to parents’ access to that information.

When minors are authorized to consent for their own health care and do so, the HIPAA Privacy Rule treats them as “individuals” who are able to exercise rights over their own protected health information (PHI).43

Also, when parents have acceded to a confidentiality agreement between a minor and a health professional, the minor is considered an “individual” under the Rule.

However, the agreement King County and SPS says: