In the time period post-Covid, $1 billion in grants for school-based mental health programs were part of a sweeping gun violence bill signed by President Joe Biden in 2022 in response to the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. The grants were meant to help schools hire more psychologists, counselors and other mental health workers, especially in rural areas.
Although the Uvalde shooting provided a rationale for the funding, the mental health of students post-Covid was and still is a huge issue for schools. In rural communities, the access to mental health services have traditionally been scarce for students who are struggling with anxiety, depression and potential suicidal behavior.
In a recent Associated Press article, it has become clear that grant funding for schools allocated to hiring more counselors and psychologists has been rescinded by our current administration. For example, in spite of a ratio of 1 mental health professional for every 1100 students in the State of New York, a vital program for rural schools to train and hire mental health professionals has been cut.
Hennessey Lustica has been overseeing grant-funded efforts to train and hire more school psychologists, counselors and social workers in the Finger Lakes region, but those efforts may soon come to end — a casualty of the Trump administration’s decision to cancel school mental health grants around the country.
“Cutting this funding is just going to devastate kids,” said Lustica, project director of the Wellness Workforce Collaborative in the Seneca Falls Central School District. “The workforce that we’re developing, just in my 21 school districts it’s over 20,000 kids that are going to be impacted by this and not have the mental health support that they need.”
The response of the current administration, and I quote, “We owe it to American families to ensure that taxpayer dollars are supporting evidence-based practices that are truly focused on improving students’ mental health,” Education Department spokesperson Madi Biedermann said. This is all being appealed by several states.
These grants were also supporting other states throughout our country. California will lose $4 million. Alabama will lose $15 million. Wisconsin will lose $8 million. The progress made to bring more balance to the mental health of so many students will be greatly diminished if this grant program ends.
“We’ve got huge amounts of depression, huge amounts of anxiety, lots of trauma and not enough providers,” Lustica said. “School is the place where kids are getting a lot of the services they need.”
“Some families in the region are unable to afford private counseling or are unable to get their children to appointments given transportation challenges,” said Danielle Legg, a graduate student who did an internship as a school social worker with funding from the grant program.
As I have written in many of my posts, we are just not prioritizing the mental health needs of our youth in America. I fear what will happen to all of these students if we cannot position their needs in a place of importance in our budgets and in our services. I do hope these grants can be reset so that we as a nation can provide the mental health services that we know are essential to our youth community. If we do not provide these services, the consequences will be severe for all the communities that will be impacted.
Gerry Vassar
President/CEO
