The Dispatch
A clinic that lives inside the school day
It is a Tuesday morning in a district somewhere in one of fifteen states, and a counselor has just flagged a ninth-grader who stopped coming to first period. In the old script, that referral would disappear into a two-month waitlist and a stack of voicemails. Instead, within twenty-four hours, a bilingual care coordinator calls the family, sorts out the insurance, and books a licensed clinician. The first session lands inside a week. The student never leaves the orbit of their school.
This is Cartwheel as it operates today: not an app a teenager downloads and forgets, but a telehealth service stitched directly into how a school already works. By early 2026 the company calls itself the largest school-based mental-health telehealth provider in the country, working with roughly 350 districts. The claim is bold. The mechanism behind it is almost boringly practical.
"Cartwheel is fundamentally changing how youth and families access the mental health support they need."
The Problem They Saw
The math of a crisis nobody could staff
Nearly one in five children lives with a mental, emotional, or behavioral disorder. Demand went vertical. Supply did not.
Schools felt it first and worst. Seventy percent of public schools reported rising demand for mental-health services. Only twelve percent believed they could actually meet it. The gap between those two numbers is where kids fall - into waitlists that run past two months, into appointments their parents can't reach during work hours, into a referral system that treats "we'll call you" as a plan.
The irony is hard to miss. The country built an entire profession around helping young people, then made it nearly impossible for a young person in distress to reach one quickly. A counselor could see the problem clearly and still have nowhere to send the student.
1 in 5
kids with a mental health disorder
70%
of schools report rising demand
12%
feel able to meet that demand
2+ mo.
typical wait for care
"Mental health and academic success are intrinsically linked."
- Emily McGinty, Managing Director, A-Street
The Founders' Bet
Meet kids where they already are
Cartwheel's founders made one wager in 2022: stop asking families to find care, and route care through the place every student already goes five days a week. The school becomes the front door. The waitlist becomes a 24-hour callback.
It helped that the three people making the bet had spent years inside the problem. Joe English had worked with more than 700 schools building social-emotional learning curriculum. Daniel Tartakovsky had advised the U.S. Surgeon General and helped write the Advisory on Protecting Youth Mental Health - essentially the federal memo announcing that this crisis was real. Dr. Juliana Chen brought the clinical backbone as a practicing psychiatrist.
The insight was less about technology than about engagement. A referral from a trusted counselor converts far better than a flyer sent home in a backpack. Show up where trust already exists, and more students actually start - and finish - care.
Joe English
Co-Founder & CEO
Worked with 700+ schools on social-emotional learning curriculum before building the front door to care.
Daniel Tartakovsky
Co-Founder & COO
Former policy advisor to the U.S. Surgeon General; helped develop the Advisory on Protecting Youth Mental Health.
Dr. Juliana Chen
Co-Founder & CMO
Psychiatrist anchoring the clinical model and the evidence-based standard of care.
The Product
One referral, a whole system behind it
A school sends one referral. What unfolds is a full multi-tiered system of support - clinical care for the student, scaffolding for the family, and reporting for the district.
Care is covered by most families' insurance, including Medicaid, which Cartwheel accepts alongside 99% of major insurers. For most families, that means no added cost - the barrier that usually ends the conversation simply isn't there.
Individual & group therapy
Evidence-based teletherapy (CBT, DBT) with licensed clinicians, one-on-one or in clinician-led groups.
Psychiatry & medication
Telepsychiatry evaluations and ongoing medication management where it's clinically appropriate.
Family therapy & parent guidance
Sessions and skill-building workshops that pull caregivers into the care plan instead of leaving them outside it.
School Avoidance Program
A specialty track aimed squarely at chronic absenteeism and the students who've stopped showing up.
Staff support & MTSS
Professional development for school staff plus a multi-tiered framework that fits how districts already operate.
District dashboards
HIPAA- and FERPA-aware reporting on engagement, outcomes, and ROI - care you can audit, not just trust.
"Evidence-based mental health care. No waitlists."
- Cartwheel's standing promise to schools
The Mission
End the crisis, not just treat it
Cartwheel frames its work as a public-health intervention more than a product launch. The stated goal is plain: end the youth mental-health crisis by making fast, affordable, evidence-based care the default rather than the exception.
That ambition shows in who's backing it. The Series B brought in the American Heart Association and the Citi Impact Fund - institutions that move when something looks like infrastructure, not just a startup. State partnerships in Arizona, Georgia, and Virginia point the same direction: a service trying to become part of how public education handles student wellbeing.
The skeptic's question is fair. Can outcomes hold as a clinical model scales to hundreds of districts? Cartwheel's answer is its dashboards - it would rather be measured than believed. That's an unusually testable promise in a field full of untestable ones.
"Helping kids get back to being kids."
- Cartwheel's tagline, and the whole point
Why It Matters Tomorrow
The waitlist was never the plan
Go back to that Tuesday morning. A ninth-grader stopped coming to first period.
In the world Cartwheel is building, that flag doesn't vanish into a two-month void. A coordinator calls by Wednesday. A clinician is on the calendar by the following week. The family pays little or nothing. The student's absences start dropping, and somewhere in a district dashboard, a line that used to point down begins to point up.
None of this requires inventing new science. It requires putting existing care where kids already are and refusing to accept the waitlist as inevitable. Cartwheel made that refusal its business model. Whether it can hold the outcomes across 350 districts and counting is the question worth watching - but for the ninth-grader who got a callback instead of a voicemail, the answer already arrived on time.
