The High School Wellness Center faces a significant threat due to school district budget cuts that have eliminated the full-time intake coordinator position. This role is essential for keeping the center open during school hours to meet the needs of Healdsburg students.
The total cost for the position is $84,000. The foundation has raised $25,000, leaving a $59,000 shortfall. Barbara and Howard Wollner, well-known benefactors of many local programs, donated $10,000 in July, making a significant contribution toward the goal. Other supporters of the Health Care Foundation have contributed another $15,000 to date.
“The Healdsburg High School Wellness Center serves as a trusted, accessible space where students can seek support, build resilience, and access mental health services without stigma,” read a statement from the Healthcare Foundation Northern Sonoma County. A follow-up conversation with Amy Ramirez, the foundation’s executive director, shed further light on the impact of this budget cut.
“The loss of this position has a direct impact on the availability of therapeutic services to students,” she said. “By placing additional administrative and care coordination responsibilities on clinicians, the elimination of the Intake Specialist reduces the time that the center can be open for direct services during school hours.”
During the past school year, Ramirez said approximately 20% of the student population, 105 out of 535 students, used the center. Those contacts took place in 315 counseling sessions, over 1,000 “brain break” drop-ins and four crisis assessments by the staff.
“The Healdsburg High School Wellness Center is more than a counseling office—it is a welcoming environment where students find connection, belonging and encouragement,” Ramirez said.
However, budget cuts from the Trump Administration’s ill-named “Big Beautiful Bill” torpedoed many similar funding programs nationwide. In Healdsburg it shows up in the reduction of the school district’s health budget and led to the elimination of the intake coordinator position.
Superintendent Chris Vanden Heuvel elaborated on the district’s role. “The wellness center coordinator was funded originally through a two year grant from the State. It was awarded under the auspices of giving schools time to figure out a new insurance billing initiative that can pay for some of these types of positions. The grant was no longer offered to anyone this year, and the billing plan from the State was only able to cover a very small portion of the position. Thus, we made the difficult position to eliminate it to start the year.”
Ramirez described the High School Wellness Center, located on the school campus, as a “beautiful center, with private places, a group room to talk, and decompress.” The director of the center, Mental Health Counseling Specialist Kim Harris, is backed by a licensed therapist Zenia Lemos Horning, lead psychologist and program specialist.
Engaged in a focused fundraising effort for this position, Ramirez and her board remain hopeful the necessary donations will be found. In the meantime they will “adjust their discretionary funds to meet it,” Ramirez said, adding, “We don’t have an endowment or a trust, so all the money that we push out to the community, we raise.”
Vanden Heuvel promised the district’s cooperation. “As noted, we are working with the Health Care Foundation to hopefully fully or even partially reinstate it as it provides an important service to our students.
The first day of school, Thursday Aug. 13, is a minimum day, so the time for donations and support is now.
For information or to donate, visit healthcarefoundation.net.
