Example Job Description
Director of Mental Health and Wellness
A leader who connects district mental health and wellness systems, prevention, referral pathways, provider coordination, and assigned support personnel with trustworthy evidence, equitable opportunity, and accountable action.
Interview Planning Resource
Possible Interview Q&A: Director of Mental Health and Wellness
How to use this resource: Select questions that measure competencies established through the district’s current job analysis. Ask candidates the same predetermined questions under comparable conditions and evaluate responses against the same job-related criteria.
The indicators below describe evidence a strong response may contain; they are not required scripts or the only acceptable answers.
- Referrals increase sharply after a screening rollout. What would you check?
Strong response indicators: Examines screening coverage, validity, consent, false positives, unmet need, triage capacity, and wait times with qualified clinicians; avoids treating alerts as diagnoses.
- A dashboard requests individual therapy notes. How would you respond?
Strong response indicators: Clarifies purpose and legal authority, consults records and clinical owners, limits disclosure, and uses aggregate service measures when appropriate.
- What would you do when students wait too long for services?
Strong response indicators: Validates referral and first-service dates, prioritizes urgent safety escalation, identifies capacity and handoff gaps, and tracks interim supports and actual access.
- How would you evaluate a mental health partnership?
Strong response indicators: Reviews qualifications, scope, consent, confidentiality, referral completion, continuity, experience, cost, and meaningful outcomes with appropriate clinical oversight.
- A vendor markets an AI crisis detector. How would you assess it?
Strong response indicators: Requires evidence on errors and harms, reviews privacy and response capacity, includes qualified clinical and legal review, and preserves human emergency judgment.
- A family reports an urgent safety concern during a data meeting. What would you do?
Strong response indicators: Activates district crisis procedures and qualified responders promptly, protects confidentiality, documents the handoff, and avoids delaying response for analysis.
- The mental health referral dashboard disagrees with source records. How would you resolve this?
Strong response indicators: Checks populations, dates, definitions, refreshes, joins and corrections for referral access, wait times, service continuity and unmet demand; reconciles with accountable owners, documents fixes and adds preventive checks.
- What evidence would you require before recommending this mental health service expansion?
Strong response indicators: Defines educational need, baseline, access and implementation measures, alternatives, cost and capacity; uses appropriate comparisons and uncertainty and specifies a review or exit decision.
- How would you protect sensitive records while helping teams act on referral access, wait times, service continuity and unmet demand?
Strong response indicators: Defines purpose and authorized access, minimizes disclosure, protects small groups, uses approved systems and retention rules, and consults responsible privacy and legal owners.
- A vendor proposes AI to automate recommendations in this portfolio. How would you assess it?
Strong response indicators: Tests the proposed use against district mental health and wellness systems, prevention, referral pathways, provider coordination, and assigned support personnel; reviews accuracy, subgroup errors, privacy, security, accessibility and cost, and preserves authorized human decisions and challenge procedures.
- How would you build staff capability to use referral access, wait times, service continuity and unmet demand well?
Strong response indicators: Uses authentic cases, verifies sources and denominators, explains missingness and uncertainty, coaches interpretation and checks whether evidence leads to useful changes in practice.
- What would your first 90 days as Director of Mental Health and Wellness include?
Strong response indicators: Listens to affected students, families, staff and partners; maps authority and obligations, validates referral access, wait times, service continuity and unmet demand, identifies urgent gaps and proposes a focused plan with owners and review dates.
Position Description
The Director of Mental Health and Wellness leads district mental health and wellness systems, prevention, referral pathways, provider coordination, and assigned support personnel. The district or employing agency should define the final portfolio, delegated authority, and relationships with other program owners.
The position uses access, wait-time, continuity, and service evidence to improve support while protecting sensitive records; separates program leadership from clinical practice and emergency authority.
Reports To
Illustrative reporting relationship: Assistant Superintendent of Student Services or other designated administrator. Confirm the locally approved structure and delegated authority.
Required Education and Credentials
Required
- Illustrative district qualification for review: master's degree in school psychology, counseling, social work, mental health, educational leadership, or a related field; confirm the local degree requirement and permitted equivalents.
- Hold the California credential, permit, professional license, or other authorization required by the actual assignment. HR must verify whether administrative, pupil-services, clinical, or other authorization is needed; the management title alone does not authorize professional practice. Clinical practice and clinical supervision, if assigned, require appropriate professional authorization and supervision; verify these separately from program management.
- Complete district-required employment clearances and training in student privacy, nondiscrimination, accessibility, records, safety, and responsible use of technology.
Preferred
- Graduate coursework or sustained professional learning in applied statistics, program evaluation, improvement science, education data systems, or responsible AI for educational decision-making.
- Advanced preparation in school psychology, counseling, social work, mental health, educational leadership, or a related field, inclusive leadership, family partnership, and coaching adults to use evidence effectively.
Required / Desired Experience
Required Experience
- Illustrative minimum for local review: five years of successful school mental health or pupil-services leadership, referral-system improvement, and interagency coordination; confirm experience thresholds and permitted equivalents.
- Experience supervising assigned staff, coordinating partners, managing resources, and implementing improvement across the assigned portfolio.
- Demonstrated use of referral access, wait times, service continuity and unmet demand to investigate needs, verify records, evaluate action, and explain findings and limitations.
Desired Experience
- Experience with California district or regional program requirements, implementation monitoring, and improvement with diverse communities.
- Experience with a mental health referral dashboard, approved spreadsheets and tools such as Excel, Google Sheets, Power BI, Tableau, or equivalents; applied data-science literacy sufficient to collaborate with analysts.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities
Support Systems and Partnerships
- Lead coordinated prevention, wellness, and referral pathways with schools, qualified clinicians, families, and community partners.
- Clarify clinical supervision, crisis escalation, consent, referral ownership, and handoffs; ensure urgent concerns reach qualified responders promptly.
- Coordinate with disability, counseling, and student services owners to improve continuity while preserving individualized decisions and provider boundaries.
Access and Service Evaluation
- Track referral receipt, triage, wait time, access, delivery, follow-up, and unresolved demand using purpose-limited approved records.
- Evaluate barriers, continuity, student experience, and appropriate outcomes with qualified professionals; distinguish service use from need prevalence or clinical diagnosis.
- Review screening coverage, validity, consent requirements, false alerts, and response capacity before implementation; avoid unsupported risk labels.
Confidentiality and Professional Boundaries
- Verify applicable student-record, clinical-record, consent, mandated-reporting, and professional requirements with legal and qualified clinical owners.
- Limit district reporting to necessary authorized information; separate psychotherapy or other restricted records from general student dashboards as required.
- Review telehealth, referral, and AI products for safety, privacy, accessibility, evidence, and accountable human care; prohibit autonomous diagnosis or crisis decisions.
Leadership and Capacity
- Plan assigned staffing, contracts, supervision, professional learning, and budgets using verified demand and service-capacity evidence.
- Train teams in respectful referrals, safe handoffs, documentation, data interpretation, and appropriate escalation without expanding unlicensed practice.
- Report aggregate access, capacity, results and limitations and perform related duties within the classification.
Required Skills and Abilities
Knowledge of
- School mental health systems, prevention, trauma-informed support, referral coordination, and professional scope boundaries.
- Applicable consent, confidential records, mandated reporting, crisis protocols, disability protections, and clinical supervision requirements.
- Wait-time definitions, unmet demand, service continuity, screening validity, small-group privacy, and outcome-evaluation limits.
- Secure referral and service systems, provider agreements, access controls, telehealth tools, and AI safety evaluation.
Ability to
- Translate priorities in district mental health and wellness systems, prevention, referral pathways, provider coordination, and assigned support personnel into feasible plans, clear responsibilities and measurable follow-through.
- Validate referral access, wait times, service continuity and unmet demand using accurate sources, definitions, populations and denominators before making decisions.
- Evaluate implementation and outcomes, examine subgroup opportunity, and distinguish association from causation with qualified analytical support.
- Use approved modern systems and accessible visualizations; partner with data specialists on complex linkage, statistical methods or reproducible analysis.
- Protect confidential information, document consequential decisions, maintain professional judgment and escalate unresolved legal or policy questions.
- Lead staff and partnerships, communicate evidence and uncertainty clearly, and revise ineffective practices with affected communities.
Work Environment
- Work is performed in district offices, classrooms, school grounds, meeting rooms, and other professional settings, with remote participation as authorized.
- The position involves computer use, school visits, observation, facilitation, and detailed review of records, dashboards, assessments, reports, and communications.
- Work requires frequent coordination with school and district leaders, program specialists, students and families as appropriate, data and technology teams, fiscal and legal owners, and external partners.
- The employee encounters interruptions, competing priorities, sensitive student and personnel matters, and urgent concerns requiring calm, documented judgment.
- Workload may increase during planning and budget cycles, program transitions, monitoring and reporting reviews, public meetings, and urgent service concerns.
Other Requirements
- Successfully complete required criminal-record, fingerprint, and employment clearances.
- Complete a tuberculosis risk assessment and any examination required by applicable law or district policy.
- Maintain required credentials and complete district-assigned training in privacy, cybersecurity, accessibility, nondiscrimination, mandated reporting, and workplace safety.
- Protect confidential student and employee records; follow approved access, sharing, retention, incident-reporting, and records-request procedures.
- Travel between district offices, schools, professional-learning locations, and community meetings as assigned.
- Possess a valid California driver's license and maintain insurability when driving is an essential function; confirm the district's actual travel requirements.
- Occasionally work evenings, weekends, or extended hours for school events, public meetings, reporting deadlines, or urgent student and operational matters.
- Perform office and school-based activities involving sitting, standing, walking, communication, and computer use; confirm any role-specific lifting or other physical requirements through local job analysis.
- Perform the essential functions of the position with or without reasonable accommodation.