Digital health · School-based behavioral health
Daybreak Health
Teletherapy for students in grades K to 12, sold to school districts and billed to health plans. Six years in, the contracts are on the public record. The clinical evidence is not.
A contract, in public, with a number on it
On August 17, 2021, the Simi Valley Unified School District board in Ventura County, California took up consent item 8. It ratified Agreement A22.042 with Daybreak Health, Inc. The board packet spelled out what the district was buying: one universal administration of an online wellbeing screener, nine virtual classes, up to 400 intake sessions and up to 1,200 one to one counseling sessions, each 50 minutes. The cost for the year was $160,000, or $100 a session at the cap. A later addendum recombined the two pools into 1,600 sessions and pushed the end date to August 31, 2022.
School districts buy in public, which makes this category unusually legible: price, session count and signature all sit in board packets. What is not in those packets is any independent measurement of whether the therapy worked.
The gap the model is aimed at
The National Association of School Psychologists recommends one school psychologist per 500 students and estimates the actual ratio is one per 1,211. A US Department of Education survey reported by Modern Healthcare found 17 percent of public schools offered telehealth during the 2021 to 2022 school year, and 52 percent used federal money to start mental health programs. Most of that money came through the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief program, funded at $189.5 billion across three pandemic laws. It expired. That is the commercial question for the whole category, and Daybreak has answered it by moving the bill off the district and onto insurance.
Two Stanford roommates and a brother who left school
Alex Alvarado spent almost five years at Castlight Health before starting Daybreak with his Stanford roommate Siddarth Cidambi. The origin he tells is family. His younger brother struggled with depression in middle and high school. His parents, he has said, spent hundreds of hours looking for a therapist who took their insurance and was less than an hour away, and never found one who could relate to his brother’s cultural identity. His brother, who had been accepted to college, dropped out. The lesson Alvarado drew from Castlight was about distribution: benefits managers, he told Axios, were saturated with point solutions, and schools were not.
From district budgets to state programs
Maven Ventures came in first. Lightspeed led a $10 million Series A announced March 1, 2022. Union Square Ventures led a $13 million Series B on August 8, 2023, joined by Lux Capital and existing backers, with USV’s Rebecca Kaden taking a board seat. Total reported: $25 million.
Devika Bhushan, a pediatrician who served as California’s Acting Surgeon General in 2022, became chief medical officer in a release dated May 22, 2024. Around the same period Daybreak announced a Medi-Cal partnership and later a place on California’s Children and Youth Behavioral Health Initiative fee schedule, which routes school-linked behavioral health billing to a statewide multi-payer schedule instead of a district budget.
The prices on record track that shift. Simi Valley paid $160,000 in 2021. Santa Barbara Unified signed for $114,400 in May 2024. Chatham County Schools in North Carolina contracted for $72,000 through June 2025 on federal Title IV funds. Gilchrist County in Florida paid $11,000 for a year. By 2026, Santee Unified approved an MOU its board record calls no cost to the district, and Argo District 217 in Illinois approved a partnership its interim superintendent said was free for a year.
What is proven, and what is still claimed
| Evidence | What the record shows | Source type |
|---|---|---|
| Simi Valley Unified, CA | Agreement A22.042 ratified Aug 17, 2021. $160,000 for one year, up to 1,600 sessions per the addendum, extra sessions at $120. | Public record |
| Santa Barbara Unified, CA | Agreement dated May 8, 2024 with Daybreak Medical PC, term Nov 16, 2024 to Nov 15, 2025. $114,400 for up to 780 sessions covering roughly 60 students, plus six family classes. | Public record |
| Gilchrist County, FL | Agreement dated Aug 7, 2024 with Daybreak Medical PA, term Sep 16, 2024 to Sep 15, 2025. $11,000 at $916.67 a month, unlimited secondary referrals, up to 12 sessions per student. | Public record |
| Contracting structure | Three entities appear on district paper: Daybreak Health, Inc. in 2021, then Daybreak Medical PC (San Francisco, EIN 86-3772055) in California and Daybreak Medical PA (Dallas, EIN 88-2644902) in Florida. The professional entities carry the clinical contracts and the right to bill payers. | Public record |
| Student data | The Santa Barbara agreement designates Daybreak a contractor under FERPA at 34 CFR 99.31(a)(1)(i)(B), under district control for education records, with use limited to eligibility and service tracking. | Public record |
| Clinician licensure | Company-stated: LCSWs, LMFTs, LPCCs, licensed psychologists and licensed psychiatrists, each with at least three years of adolescent experience, plus Mental Health Associates working toward licensure under supervision. No independent audit found. | Company-stated |
| Psychiatry | The company FAQ states it does not provide psychiatry services to students, while the same FAQ lists licensed psychiatrists among its clinician types. | Company pages disagree |
| Parental consent | Company-stated: families complete a consent for treatment and a release of information before a minor begins, and independent reporting on the Chatham County program says referral includes parental consent. The student-facing FAQ separately tells students who do not want to tell their family that a counselor may be able to help them start on their own. | Company pages disagree |
| Outcomes | Company-stated: 81 percent of students showed clinical improvement on the GAD and PHQ screeners, four in five counselors reported symptom improvement, 92 percent of families reported behavioral improvement at home. No denominators, no comparison group, no external analyst. | Company-stated |
| Peer-reviewed evidence | No PubMed-indexed paper on Daybreak Health and no registered trial found in searches on September 22, 2026. | Not found |
Read plainly: the commercial record is checkable, the clinical record is internal. Nothing here says the therapy does not help students. It says that six years in, no one outside the company has measured whether it does.
What to watch
- Any published evaluation from a district, a state program or an academic group rather than from the company.
- Whether the no cost to the district deals hold. They move revenue risk onto payer reimbursement.
- Renewals. The Chatham, Santa Barbara and Gilchrist terms all ended in 2025. Board records will show what followed.
- Consent rules. Texas SB 12 now requires written parental consent for school mental health services, and parents in Orange County, California have pressed for an opt-in standard.
- A Series C, or its absence. The last announced round closed in August 2023.
In their words
“Daybreak’s story started about 15 years ago when my younger brother’s struggle with depression during middle school and high school changed the course of his life forever.”
Alex Alvarado, co-founder and CEO, Fitt Insider, 2023 · Interview
“Our program data shows that 81% of the students we work with have clinical improvements on the GAD/PHQ [anxiety/depression assessments], four out of five school counselors report noticeable improvements in student’s symptoms, and 92% of families report behavioral improvements at home.”
Alex Alvarado, Fitt Insider, 2023 · Company-stated
“To make this financially sustainable, the health insurance companies can also provide some reimbursement for the care so that the school district doesn’t necessarily have to pay for every single kid into perpetuity.”
Alex Alvarado, Fierce Healthcare, 2023 · Independent
“That really is what unlocked Daybreak moving into this world of having the school sponsor a bulk of the services.”
Alex Alvarado on federal pandemic relief funds, Modern Healthcare, 2023 · Independent
“Understanding the decision-making process of school boards and district leadership is more nuanced than the decision-making process of a medium-sized corporation.”
Shiv Bhavnani, founder of behavioral health research institute GIMBHI, to Axios, 2022 · Independent
“When the PowerSchool information hack came with this community school model, all that information regarding children’s personal information and mental health could be anywhere now”
Jackie Whelan, parent, to the Orange County Board of Education, reported by The Learning Standard, 2026 · Independent
Related companies
Sources
- Public recordRatification of Agreement A22.042, board packet
- Public recordAddendum A22.084, with services agreement and schedule of fees
- Public recordServices Agreement with Daybreak Medical PC
- Public recordServices Agreement with Daybreak Medical PA
- Public recordBoard approves Daybreak Health MOU for $138,300
- Public recordMotion 2026-155, one year teletherapy partnership approved
- Public recordPubMed and ClinicalTrials.gov searches, no company papers or trials
- IndependentSchool-based startup closes Series A
- IndependentHow long can these telehealth companies stay in school?
- IndependentThis startup aims to scale youth mental health services
- IndependentAs federal funds expire, Chatham County Schools provides mental health care
- IndependentGSCS partners with Daybreak Health to expand access to mental health services
- IndependentParents Push for Opt-In Mental Health After Data Breach
- InterviewDaybreak Health CEO Alex Alvarado on school-based mental health care
- CompanyDaybreak Health Raises $13 Million Series B
- CompanyContinuing our Mission, founder letter
- CompanyMedi-Cal partnership announcement, and the Bhushan appointment release
- CompanyFAQ on clinician licensure, consent, FERPA and HIPAA
- CompanyNamed statewide partner in California, joins the CYBHI fee schedule
- CompanyLinkedIn page: founding year, headcount band, Georgia district count
Profile researched and written by Healthcare Discovery. Last updated September 29, 2026.
