LAKELAND – On June 23, Northern Lights Public Schools (NLPS) announced that it will be making changes to how it delivers mental health supports for the upcoming 2025-2026 school year.
According to information from NLPS, the school division will be moving from its current model, where each school has a Student Advocacy Counsellor, to a regional, ‘team-based approach’ that includes Child Development Counsellors (CDCs) whose role will be to provide universal supports as well as some group and individual supports. There will be two CDCs in the Bonnyville region, three in Cold Lake, and three in Lac La Biche.
As part of this new ‘family of schools’ approach to offering mental health supports, mental health therapists will be located in Bonnyville, Cold Lake and Lac La Biche. There will also be a clinical psychologist who will support students requiring specialized (Tier) 3 services throughout the division.
These changes have raised alarms among some residents of the Lac La Biche area, who have voiced their concerns on social media.
One resident of Lac La Biche County, Kristen Shewchuk, wrote a letter addressed to NLPS superintendent Rick Cusson and the members of the school division’s board of trustees.
In this letter, which was posted on social media, Shewchuk stated that she is writing to express her “deep concern” regarding the recent reduction in Student Advocacy Counsellor positions across the division.
Shewchuk pointed out that previously, each school had at least one dedicated Student Advocacy Counsellor, with several requiring more based on their size and the complexity of student needs.
“These professionals were more than just staff members—they were trusted adults who built meaningful relationships with students, supported their emotional well-being, and helped them navigate challenges both inside and outside the classroom,” she said.
Northern Lights Public School Division, Shewchuk continued, has consistently emphasized the importance of student mental health and well-being in its strategic priorities and public messaging. However, she added, these recent cuts appear to contradict those values.
“As a northern rural division, we already face a lack of accessible community-based mental health services,” Shewchuk said. “For many students, their only consistent access to mental health support is through school. Removing or significantly limiting that access undermines student safety, engagement, and long-term success.”
Shewchuk listed several reasons why maintaining strong mental health support in schools is critical, and these include academic success, prevention and early intervention, safe and inclusive schools, and support for staff and families.
Cutting one of the most vital supports for our students, particularly in a time when youth mental health concerns are rising nationally, she said in the letter, is short-sighted and harmful.
“I respectfully urge the division to reconsider this decision. If budget limitations are a factor, I encourage you to consult with school communities and consider alternative approaches that do not come at the expense of our students’ well-being,” Shewchuk said. “I, along with many other concerned members of our school communities, would appreciate a transparent explanation of the rationale behind these cuts, as well as a clear plan for how the division intends to continue meeting its commitments to student mental health and well-being.”
When speaking with Lakeland This Week on June 24, Shewchuk explained that she has spoken with other parents, and they have sent letters as well.
As to how NLPS came to the decision to move from having student advocacy counsellors in each school to a ‘family of schools’ model, according to Nicole Garner, the Communications and Public Relations Manager for the school division, there were several factors involved, including providing good mental health supports as well as budgetary concerns.
“Part of our focus on student mental health has been to continually review how we are delivering mental health services to students and how to ensure we can provide the support they need,” Garner told Lakeland This Week.
One area that was identified as needing enhancement, explained Garner, were Tier 2 (targeted) and Tier 3 (specialized) mental health supports.
“Tier 3 supports were not provided by our student advocacy counsellors and can be difficult for students and families to access in our communities,” she stated.
According to Garner, two years ago, the school division received a grant in partnership with the Bonnyville Primary Care Network to establish the Pathway of Hope program, which employed two psychologists, a mental health nurse, and a mental health navigator, to provide Tier 3 supports, such as one-on-one clinical counselling.
“That grant ended at the end of this school year, and we wanted to ensure students would still have access to those supports,” Garner said.
As a result of this, part of the school division’s change to a new delivery model is the addition of a clinical psychologist and three mental health therapists, with one in each of the Bonnyville, Cold Lake, and Lac La Biche regions. This is in addition to the eight Child Development Counsellors who will focus on universal supports and some group and one-on-one supports.
Other mental health supports that will be available for students, according to information from NLPS, includes the CASA classroom (offered in partnership with CASA Mental Health and Alberta Education, the Successful Families, Successful Kids program, as well as Community Helpers, which matches teen volunteers with middle and high school students to help with mental health and well-being.
Another factor impacting this shift, Garner said, is the cost restraints NLPS is experiencing as a division, which needed to reduce spending in its 2025-2026 budget by $6.8 million.
“To do this, in addition to reducing spending in areas not related to staffing, we also had to reduce staffing throughout the division, including school administrators, teachers, educational assistants, student advocacy counsellors, librarians, and centralized services (division office staff),” she explained.
According to Garner, NLPS was one of the only school divisions in Alberta that had student advocacy counsellors provided in each of its schools. Some school divisions, she explained, do not have any school-based mental health counsellors, while others use a model similar to the one that NLPS is transitioning to, with centralized supports that are shared by schools.
When asked how these changes will affect student advocacy counsellors currently working in the division, Garner explained that some of these counsellors were offered positions as Child Development Counsellors.
“We are still working on confirming who will fill all of the roles on our team for next year,” she said. “We hope to have everything in place for September.”
