Earlier this month, the Livermore Valley Joint Unified School District (LVJUSD) held a tour of Livermore High School’s (LHS) Wellness Center and mental health roundtable to discuss the Center’s milestones and its future direction of addressing student mental health. The roundtable included Livermore Education Association (LEA) member and LHS Wellness Center Counselor Zach Radecke, LVJUSD Wellness Coordinator Dr. Liisa Hanninen-Danner, other LEA members who are working to bring this same program to Livermore’s elementary schools and Culture Keepers, who are LHS student wellness leaders and play an integral part in ensuring their peers see a friendly face when walking into the Center. Backed by state and federal funding, they are at the forefront of addressing mental health for Livermore’s students.  

Roundtable with administrators, staff, educators and former and current students

“We’re finding, depending on how you look at it, suicide is now the second or third leading cause of death for children. We’re just trying to just keep students alive, honestly. Just having a Wellness Center and students knowing that the space exists on their site is an intervention in itself. We had 525 students come in last year, out of 1,800 in our student body here at Livermore High. It’s a sign that there’s a significant need right now.” 

–LHS Wellness Center Counselor Zach Radecke

What makes this Wellness Center unique among others is that it was started based on student feedback out of a monthly meeting they had at the time called “student forum,” right before the COVID-19 pandemic hit.  

“We did a needs assessment there and students were saying, ‘We need something like this on site. We need a space.’ And so that was the origin of it – it is students coming to me and our principal, Roxana Mohammed, and saying, ‘Hey, Mr. Radecke, we need to start something. We need to do something.’ And at the time it was going into the COVID-19 pandemic, so mental health needs for students increased quite a bit during that time. So having the space here and available to students, the timing was perfect,” said Radecke. 

LHS Wellness Center Counselor Zach Radecke

“I am so impressed with what our members, including Zach Radecke, have developed here for students. It’s just the initiative that it took to bring this to life, and now to try to scale it to be district-wide is amazing and impressive, and I appreciate the work.”

–LEA President Aimee Thompson

Culture Keepers play an integral role in keeping the Center thriving. “When we first started coming out of COVID, we created the curriculum for the place, along with our teachers. It was really inspiring to have a teacher really take in our ideas and a student perspective and put it into action. And it’s been really beautiful to see how far it’s come,” said former student and Culture Keeper, Rachel Hendry.  

“It is honestly just so rewarding seeing how much this place has grown from when we started right after COVID. And we had to work with such little things, and we brought this from the ground up. It was just really nice to finally have a program at this school. And going into other schools where staff, teachers and counselors really hear and consider what you have to say and your input, and put it into real life and make it something that you can actually use is so helpful. It’s amazing seeing how much it’s grown and how often students use it now,” said Kassandra Torres, who is also a former student and Culture Keeper.  

Former students and Culture Keepers: Kassandra Torres (left) and Rachel Hendry (right)

This district is also looking to expand to nine secondary sites. “We really want to try to reach all students and wellness centers are going to look different depending on the educational setting. So, in a high school setting, we can have Culture Keepers that are maybe more involved with peer-to-peer mental health support and at the middle school maybe we can have let’s say eighth-grade students that are ambassadors of mental health that help with school culture and help create projects related to mental health. Maybe not necessarily doing that team mental health first aid training, but still being supportive of their peers in some way all the way down to elementary as well,” said Radecke. “Just having a wellness center available as an intervention for folks across K-12 is important.”