California’s plan to fund on-campus mental health care has turned into a paperwork nightmare for many school districts. The program, which was supposed to provide permanent funding for mental health services, has been slow to deliver, with many districts still waiting for reimbursement.

Delays and Denials

Plumas Charter School, a small rural school, has been trying to get reimbursed for its mental health services for over two years. Despite attending webinars and filling out forms, the school has only received one payment of $8,000, leaving at least $12,000 in claims still outstanding.

Other districts are facing similar challenges. The Anaheim Elementary School District has successfully clawed back $1.1 million since early 2025, but that represents less than 30% of the mental health services it actually provided. Many parents are hesitant to hand over insurance information due to fears of federal immigration raids.

A Statewide Problem

Out of roughly 1,000 public schools, community colleges, and universities signed up for the program, fewer than one-fifth had filed a single claim as of June 1. More than half of all California school systems have opted out of the program entirely. The state’s third-party administrator, Carelon Behavioral Health, has approved just $11.3 million across 186 educational agencies, despite the state paying them $65 million to run the system.

State officials argue that the program is simply facing normal growing pains for a massive policy shift. However, experts say that the messy rollout shows the risk of trying to fix too many things at once. While other states chose to focus on single goals, California tried to overhaul its entire school billing framework overnight.

Original reporting: Tampa Free Press — read the source article.