Ensley, Navy Point elementaries to add on-campus medical, mental health care

Ensley Elementary and Navy Point Elementary will become the fifth, sixth and final schools to join the Healthy Schools Escambia initiative.

Along with access to free on-campus medical, dental and optometry care, afterschool tutoring and other services for students, the initiative also provides other wraparound services to the children's families at no cost.

All Ensley and Navy Point students will have access to the initiative's benefits when 2026-27 classes begin in August, said Jessica Johnson, vice president of impact services for the United Way of West Florida.

The schools were selected by Escambia County Public Schools and will join Global Learning Academy, O.J. Semmes, Brentwood and West Pensacola elementary schools as Healthy Schools. Global Learning Academy and Semmes were the first schools chosen for the pilot program in January 2025.

In 2024, the Escambia Children's Trust budgeted $450,000 per school per year to fund the initiative, which is a national program supported by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and is a framework for addressing health in schools.

The initiative provides social service support; nutrition and health education; mental health services; community, school and family engagement opportunities; on-site after school physical and academic support programs; and mentoring.

The Children's Trust had originally planned to include 10 ECPS elementary schools in the Healthy Schools Escambia initiative over a five-year period but scaled down the program.

"This is what we have budgeted right now for the initiative," said Children's Trust Executive Director Lindsey Cannon, noting there are no immediate plans to add more schools.

"It's more about our strategic plan moving forward and related to the state property tax referendum."

If approved by voters in the November general election, the proposed constitutional amendment would raise homestead exemptions from the current $50,000 to $150,000 in 2027 and to $250,000 in 2028. Property taxes to fund public schools would remain intact, but revenue for counties and municipalities would drop sharply, including funding for the Children's Trust.

So far, Cannon said the Children's Trust has been pleased with the outcomes of the Healthy Schools Escambia initiative.

For instance, the Y Sports program allows students to participate in a new activity such as basketball, flag football, soccer and baseball every six weeks and is part of the Healthy Schools initiative. The Y Reads program also received funding from the Children's Trust.

Cannon said that Global Learning Academy Principal Lalla Pierce recently shared in an email that students in the Y Sports and Y Reads programs had higher math and reading scores and attendance rates.

"The kids who were in Y Sports had 67% math gains compared to 57% of the general school population. She also talked about combating the year-end slump when general school attendance plummeted to its lowest during quarter four-88%," Cannon said.

"Ms. Pierce said Y Sports students mitigated this drop-off by holding to a 92.87% attendance rate. She said students in Y Sports and the afterschool program were also 10 percentage points ahead in math. They were 4.5 (percentage) points above in attendance and outpaced the schoolwide reading gains by 6 percentage points."

In 2024, the Escambia Children's Trust executive board awarded the United Way, along with nine partner agencies, the bid to implement the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child program in Escambia County schools.

The nonprofit and partners are Achieve Escambia, The Arc Gateway, Community Health Northwest Florida, the Council on Agency of West Florida, Gulf Coast Kid's House, Lakeview Mental Health, Legal Services of North Florida, the University of West Florida and the YMCA of Northwest Florida,

Johnson, the United Way of West Florida vice president of impact services, stressed that each school's Healthy Schools Escambia programming would be tailored to the needs of its students, noting that each school will focus strongly on afterschool tutoring by teachers the students know.

"Our needs assessments have helped us to understand what the schools and parents are saying is needed at each campus," she said.

"Overall, we want to ensure that children in the schools are healthy, holistically well. But we're also looking at attendance, engagement, academic excellence," she said, adding the initiative's primary goal is to match the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child framework.

Last year, a Y Sports program was established at West Pensacola Elementary.

"This gives the kids an opportunity to go outside and run around, which lessens their screen time and keeps them physically active," Johnson said.

The Children's Trust was approved by voters in 2020 and is responsible for allocating more than $10 million annually in property taxes to fund initiatives and services to help children and their families, especially those with the greatest need.

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Ensley, Navy Point elementaries to add on-campus medical, mental health care

Reporting by Mary Lett, Pensacola News Journal / Pensacola News Journal

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This story was originally published July 6, 2026 at 11:39 AM.