A letter of support for SEL360+

I am writing to express my strong support for mySHO’s SEL360+ program, and in particular for its Family Care Team track. SEL360+ puts a social and emotional learning curriculum in the classroom and pairs it with a licensed mental and behavioral health agency working alongside the school. In a parallel track, the young person’s Family Care Team works through the same SEL360 curriculum they do, so the vocabulary is shared at home and the exercises can happen at the kitchen table rather than only in a classroom. That pairing, and the family’s part in it, is what makes the model different. The curriculum reaches every enrolled participant every day as Tier 1 support, and clinicians from the partner agency review that daily engagement, so someone who needs Tier 2 or Tier 3 care can be identified and treated before the need becomes a crisis, a suspension, harm to self or others, or a lost school year.

As a certified school psychologist and licensed psychologist in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania who is also board certified in school psychology by the American Board of Professional Psychology, I feel especially qualified to detail why I support SEL360+ and to explain how I see this service benefiting young people across the country.

• 39.7 percent of high school students experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness: 52.6 percent of female students, and 65.7 percent of students who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or questioning.
• 20.4 percent seriously considered attempting suicide and 9.5 percent attempted, including 12.6 percent of female students and 19.7 percent of students who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or questioning.
• American Indian or Alaska Native students (11.5 percent) and Black students (10.3 percent) attempted suicide at rates above the 9.5 percent figure for students overall.

Several of these figures improved between the 2021 and 2023 surveys, and that improvement is real and worth naming. It does not change the arithmetic above. The number of young people who need help still exceeds what school-employed staff can reach one at a time.

Taken altogether, schools are seeing more trauma, more diverse learners, and more young people who require specialized supports under Section 504 and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, while the school day and the staff supporting it stay the same. Given these realities, it is imperative to find new solutions to the challenges young people face.

After reviewing the resources that underlie SEL360+, it is my professional opinion that this platform offers an innovative approach to serving young people. SEL360+ delivers a 32-week curriculum, two 16-week semesters, for youth ages 12 to 24, drawing on a library of more than 300 exercises developed with the UCSF Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute and available in 92 languages. Because the age range runs to 24 and the competencies include workforce readiness alongside emotional regulation, professional communication, conflict resolution and resilience building, the model fits young adults in workforce and transition programs as readily as it fits students in a classroom. An organization and its clinical partner see in real time how young people are engaging and can triage who needs immediate, frequent or ongoing support. The decision to move someone to Tier 2 or Tier 3 rests with a licensed clinician, not with a score, and a young person who moves stays in the same clinical record rather than being handed off to start over. Schools and partner organizations can also be notified about happenings in the community that may affect a young person’s functioning, either as a general community alert or as a specific Handle With Care notification about an individual. Information sharing rests on established memoranda of understanding and on the informed consent of the young person, the parent and the organization, and the platform is built for FERPA, HIPAA and COPPA compliance. Progress monitoring tracks whether an intervention is working for the individual and prompts adjustment when it is not.

What I find most notable as a matter of policy is how the care is paid for. SEL360+ is designed to be billed to public and private insurance rather than carried by a grant. An organization that adopts the Reimagining School-Based Mental Health framework is not adopting a program that ends when a funding cycle ends, which is the fate of a great deal of good work in this field.

mySHO reports observed results from its first deployment, at Innovation Academy West in Cleveland between April and December 2025, where suspensions fell from 13 to 3 and expulsions from 2 to 0 in school administrative records. I want to be precise about what that is. It is an observed result from a single-school pilot, not a controlled trial, and I would say the same to anyone who asked me to evaluate it. It is a reason to look closely, and it is a reason to study the model properly as it scales.

SEL360+ also includes an optional human-seeded artificial intelligence assistant for self-directed, after-hours support. It is a companion for a young person at eleven at night. It is not a risk model, it does not sort anyone into a category, and it does not substitute for clinical judgment. The program is fully functional without it and it is not the center of this model. The center is a structured, clinician-authored curriculum delivered by adults in a room, with licensed clinicians attached to the program and making the clinical decisions.

I recommend SEL360+ without reservation.

Please let me know if I can answer any questions. Contact me at HughesT@duq.edu.