Latest news with #BipartisanSaferCommunitiesAct
Miami Herald
3 days ago
- Politics
- Miami Herald
After Uvalde, school mental health grants had bipartisan support. Now Trump is cutting them.
Schools will likely have to lay off social workers and counselors, and college programs designed to train mental health providers may shut down after the Trump administration decided it would stop funding grants created under a bipartisan law passed in response to mass school shootings. The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act came on the heels of the devastating 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, where an 18-year-old gunman killed 19 elementary schoolers and two teachers. Gun control remains a deeply divisive issue, but Democrats and Republicans agreed: Schools should get more money to address students' mental health needs. They set aside $1 billion to do that. When it came time to distribute that money, the Biden administration gave applicants the option to show how they planned to diversify the mental health profession and prepare educators to work with kids from diverse backgrounds-in a bid to help students who often have higher needs but struggle to access care outside of school. Now schools that tailored their proposals to meet that criteria appear to be among those losing their funding. "The Department has determined these grantees are violating the letter or purpose of Federal civil rights law; conflict with the Department's policy of prioritizing merit, fairness, and excellence in education; undermine the well-being of the students these programs are intended to help; or constitute an inappropriate use of federal funds," Brandy Brown, the deputy assistant secretary for K-12 education, wrote in an email to members of Congress the night of April 29. The Education Department has the authority to stop funding multiyear grant recipients, but it rarely does so. The state education agencies in Colorado, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin were among the grantees that lost their funding. So did the San Diego County Office of Education, Lincoln Public Schools in Nebraska, and Teachers College at Columbia University, which was supporting efforts in New York City schools. "Grant recipients used the funding to implement race-based actions like recruiting quotas in ways that have nothing to do with mental health and could hurt the very students the grants are supposed to help," Madi Biedermann, an Education Department spokesperson, wrote in an email to Chalkbeat. The Trump administration is objecting, in particular, to the Biden administration's decision to give schools more points on their grant application if they planned to increase the number of mental health staffers from diverse backgrounds or who were from the communities where they'd be working with kids. The federal notice didn't say what counted as "diverse," and it noted that any hiring strategies used by schools had to follow federal civil rights laws. "We were not there to say that this meant there had to be any type of racial quotas, or it had to be along the lines or race, or ability, or language," said Mary Wall, who until January served as the Education Department's deputy assistant secretary for P-12 education. "We simply said it would be wise and we encourage applicants to make hires of school-based mental health professionals that are reflective of the communities that they're serving." Many schools expected to get three or four more years of funding, but now the grants will run out in December. Wall said schools were well on their way to hitting the goal of hiring and training 14,000 mental health professionals, but these cuts put that at risk. "Not giving grant continuations has an extreme impact on whether or not the work can continue," she said. That's already happening in some places. Teachers College had begun training five graduate students to provide mental health services in schools, and was preparing to send offer letters to eight more when the college found out it had lost its $4.9 million five-year grant. The Trump administration ended it back in March when it terminated $400 million in funding for Columbia University. Those trainees, many of whom were bilingual or first-generation college students who couldn't otherwise afford graduate school were slated to work in high-need schools in Harlem and East Harlem-parts of New York City where many newly arrived immigrants live and families often struggle to find stable housing. Now, schools won't get the year of free services those trainees were going to provide, such as therapy and parent training. And there will be gaps in the future pipeline, too. "We were going to be producing professionals who would be working in these settings delivering school-based mental health services for years to come, ideally their entire careers," said Prerna Arora, an associate professor of psychology and education at Teachers College who was overseeing the grant. "We are in desperate need of these types of professionals." Cuts to mental health grants part of anti-DEI push The cuts appear to be part of the Trump administration's broader attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts and exemplify how the administration is using the Supreme Court's ruling that barred affirmative action in higher education to target a much wider set of DEI practices in K-12 schools. Already, the Trump administration has threatened to withhold federal education funding from states that won't sign off on its contested interpretation of what constitutes racial discrimination under federal civil rights law-a policy that's currently on hold as several legal challenges work their way through the courts. The Trump administration is investigating Chicago Public Schools for launching a Black student success plan and has sought to dismantle other practices, such as forming staff affinity groups based on race or allowing college students to participate in separate graduation ceremonies that celebrate their race or heritage. It is unclear exactly how many of the 265 grantees listed on the Education Department's website lost their funding and how much money was clawed back. On May 1, an Education Department spokesperson said they could not provide a list of which school districts, states, or colleges lost their funding. The Education Department told members of Congress that the terminated grants were worth $1 billion, but that is almost certainly an overestimate, Wall said, as many grantees had already spent a chunk of their money. The grants paid for 1,500 to 2,000 new mental health providers to work in schools across the U.S. in the first year alone, Wall said. It also appears some schools kept their grants. The Indiana Department of Education, Fort Wayne Community Schools in Indiana, and Normal Public Schools in Oklahoma all told Chalkbeat they hadn't been contacted about changes to their funding. The pandemic helped bring the need for more school-based mental health workers into sharp relief as many schools saw a spike in children experiencing depression, anxiety, or other kinds of stress. So did the many unaddressed warning signs exhibited by the teenage gunman in Uvalde, who spoke often of violence and targeted the classroom where he was once bullied. That, and similar cases in other school shootings, led Congress to invest in mental health staff as a school safety measure. With the help of federal COVID relief funds, many schools launched teletherapy services to address in-person staff shortages and to connect kids with bilingual therapists, male counselors, or mental health workers of color-who are often in especially short supply, but can form close connections with kids who look like them or who faced similar challenges growing up. While there isn't much research on the effects of pairing school-based mental health workers with kids of similar backgrounds, "we do know in research outside of the school environment that it's actually really beneficial for students of color to have therapists or mental health supports from folks within their own communities," said Nancy Duchesneau, a senior P-12 research associate who studies children's social and emotional well-being at the nonprofit EdTrust. "If you have students of color in a school, you really do want adults in the building-teachers, school counselors, mental health supports-who are of the same race and ethnicity to be able to better understand where students are coming from and make sure that the interventions or supports that they receive are not based on bias, but are truly based upon the needs of the students," Duchesneau said. Chris Rufo, the influential conservative activist, was the first to publicize the mental health grant cuts, the Associated Press reported. Rufo's social media posts have prompted the Trump administration to cancel other education spending. This time, Rufo posted examples from the grant proposals on the social media site X that he said were being used to "advance left-wing racialism and discrimination." The Education Department pointed to some of those same examples when explaining what it found objectionable about the grants. One grantee planned to hire 24 new school counselors and set a goal for eight to be people of color, an Education Department spokesperson told Chalkbeat. Other grantees said they would train therapists to address racial trauma or help mental health workers use a "critical compassion perspective," instead of a colorblind perspective that assumes race and skin color don't matter. Another grantee wrote that they were training the next generation of school counselors "to recognize and challenge systemic injustices, antiracism, and the pervasiveness of white supremacy." State officials condemn-and applaud-the cuts Some officials agreed with the move. In a statement, Ryan Walters, the superintendent of Oklahoma's schools, said he applauded the Trump administration for "taking bold action to eliminate these misguided programs." Oklahoma had planned to spend $1.9 million a year to help teachers, community members, and clinicians get retrained to work as mental health staff in schools before the state lost its funding. "These grants were never about addressing real mental health needs, they were about pushing a political agenda into our classrooms," Walters said in the statement, adding that his education agency was "forced" to apply for the money by state lawmakers. "We made our opposition clear then, and we stand by it today." Other state officials condemned the cuts. In Colorado, Jeremy Meyer, a spokesperson for the state's education agency, said the state was "deeply disappointed" by the Trump administration's decision to end Colorado's grant, which was expected to total $7.5 million over five years. Now the state will get just $1.5 million. The state was still rolling out its program to help schools recruit and retrain mental health staff so "no funds had yet been distributed to the field," Meyer wrote. Jill Underly, Wisconsin's state superintendent, said in a news release that the decision to eliminate $8 million of the state's planned $10 million grant was "indefensible" at a time "when communities are urgently asking for help." Already, she wrote, the federal grant had helped Wisconsin schools hire an additional 350 mental health staffers and helped enroll 500 new graduate students in the University of Wisconsin's certification program. "Kids don't get a chance to do-over their school experience while the federal government recalibrates its political agenda," Underly wrote. "These disruptions need to stop." Chalkbeat's New York bureau chief Amy Zimmer contributed reporting. This story was produced by Chalkbeat and reviewed and distributed by Stacker. © Stacker Media, LLC.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
After Uvalde, school mental health grants had bipartisan support. Now Trump is cutting them.
Schools will likely have to lay off social workers and counselors, and college programs designed to train mental health providers may shut down after the Trump administration decided it would stop funding grants created under a bipartisan law passed in response to mass school shootings. The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act came on the heels of the devastating 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, where an 18-year-old gunman killed 19 elementary schoolers and two teachers. Gun control remains a deeply divisive issue, but Democrats and Republicans agreed: Schools should get more money to address students' mental health needs. They set aside $1 billion to do that. When it came time to distribute that money, the Biden administration gave applicants the option to show how they planned to diversify the mental health profession and prepare educators to work with kids from diverse backgrounds—in a bid to help students who often have higher needs but struggle to access care outside of school. Now schools that tailored their proposals to meet that criteria appear to be among those losing their funding. "The Department has determined these grantees are violating the letter or purpose of Federal civil rights law; conflict with the Department's policy of prioritizing merit, fairness, and excellence in education; undermine the well-being of the students these programs are intended to help; or constitute an inappropriate use of federal funds," Brandy Brown, the deputy assistant secretary for K-12 education, wrote in an email to members of Congress the night of April 29. The Education Department has the authority to stop funding multiyear grant recipients, but it rarely does so. The state education agencies in Colorado, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin were among the grantees that lost their funding. So did the San Diego County Office of Education, Lincoln Public Schools in Nebraska, and Teachers College at Columbia University, which was supporting efforts in New York City schools. "Grant recipients used the funding to implement race-based actions like recruiting quotas in ways that have nothing to do with mental health and could hurt the very students the grants are supposed to help," Madi Biedermann, an Education Department spokesperson, wrote in an email to Chalkbeat. The Trump administration is objecting, in particular, to the Biden administration's decision to give schools more points on their grant application if they planned to increase the number of mental health staffers from diverse backgrounds or who were from the communities where they'd be working with kids. The federal notice didn't say what counted as "diverse," and it noted that any hiring strategies used by schools had to follow federal civil rights laws. "We were not there to say that this meant there had to be any type of racial quotas, or it had to be along the lines or race, or ability, or language," said Mary Wall, who until January served as the Education Department's deputy assistant secretary for P-12 education. "We simply said it would be wise and we encourage applicants to make hires of school-based mental health professionals that are reflective of the communities that they're serving." Many schools expected to get three or four more years of funding, but now the grants will run out in December. Wall said schools were well on their way to hitting the goal of hiring and training 14,000 mental health professionals, but these cuts put that at risk. "Not giving grant continuations has an extreme impact on whether or not the work can continue," she said. That's already happening in some places. Teachers College had begun training five graduate students to provide mental health services in schools, and was preparing to send offer letters to eight more when the college found out it had lost its $4.9 million five-year grant. The Trump administration ended it back in March when it terminated $400 million in funding for Columbia University. Those trainees, many of whom were bilingual or first-generation college students who couldn't otherwise afford graduate school were slated to work in high-need schools in Harlem and East Harlem—parts of New York City where many newly arrived immigrants live and families often struggle to find stable housing. Now, schools won't get the year of free services those trainees were going to provide, such as therapy and parent training. And there will be gaps in the future pipeline, too. "We were going to be producing professionals who would be working in these settings delivering school-based mental health services for years to come, ideally their entire careers," said Prerna Arora, an associate professor of psychology and education at Teachers College who was overseeing the grant. "We are in desperate need of these types of professionals." The cuts appear to be part of the Trump administration's broader attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts and exemplify how the administration is using the Supreme Court's ruling that barred affirmative action in higher education to target a much wider set of DEI practices in K-12 schools. Already, the Trump administration has threatened to withhold federal education funding from states that won't sign off on its contested interpretation of what constitutes racial discrimination under federal civil rights law—a policy that's currently on hold as several legal challenges work their way through the courts. The Trump administration is investigating Chicago Public Schools for launching a Black student success plan and has sought to dismantle other practices, such as forming staff affinity groups based on race or allowing college students to participate in separate graduation ceremonies that celebrate their race or heritage. It is unclear exactly how many of the 265 grantees listed on the Education Department's website lost their funding and how much money was clawed back. On May 1, an Education Department spokesperson said they could not provide a list of which school districts, states, or colleges lost their funding. The Education Department told members of Congress that the terminated grants were worth $1 billion, but that is almost certainly an overestimate, Wall said, as many grantees had already spent a chunk of their money. The grants paid for 1,500 to 2,000 new mental health providers to work in schools across the U.S. in the first year alone, Wall said. It also appears some schools kept their grants. The Indiana Department of Education, Fort Wayne Community Schools in Indiana, and Normal Public Schools in Oklahoma all told Chalkbeat they hadn't been contacted about changes to their funding. The pandemic helped bring the need for more school-based mental health workers into sharp relief as many schools saw a spike in children experiencing depression, anxiety, or other kinds of stress. So did the many unaddressed warning signs exhibited by the teenage gunman in Uvalde, who spoke often of violence and targeted the classroom where he was once bullied. That, and similar cases in other school shootings, led Congress to invest in mental health staff as a school safety measure. With the help of federal COVID relief funds, many schools launched teletherapy services to address in-person staff shortages and to connect kids with bilingual therapists, male counselors, or mental health workers of color—who are often in especially short supply, but can form close connections with kids who look like them or who faced similar challenges growing up. While there isn't much research on the effects of pairing school-based mental health workers with kids of similar backgrounds, "we do know in research outside of the school environment that it's actually really beneficial for students of color to have therapists or mental health supports from folks within their own communities," said Nancy Duchesneau, a senior P-12 research associate who studies children's social and emotional well-being at the nonprofit EdTrust. "If you have students of color in a school, you really do want adults in the building—teachers, school counselors, mental health supports—who are of the same race and ethnicity to be able to better understand where students are coming from and make sure that the interventions or supports that they receive are not based on bias, but are truly based upon the needs of the students," Duchesneau said. Chris Rufo, the influential conservative activist, was the first to publicize the mental health grant cuts, the Associated Press reported. Rufo's social media posts have prompted the Trump administration to cancel other education spending. This time, Rufo posted examples from the grant proposals on the social media site X that he said were being used to "advance left-wing racialism and discrimination." The Education Department pointed to some of those same examples when explaining what it found objectionable about the grants. One grantee planned to hire 24 new school counselors and set a goal for eight to be people of color, an Education Department spokesperson told Chalkbeat. Other grantees said they would train therapists to address racial trauma or help mental health workers use a "critical compassion perspective," instead of a colorblind perspective that assumes race and skin color don't matter. Another grantee wrote that they were training the next generation of school counselors "to recognize and challenge systemic injustices, antiracism, and the pervasiveness of white supremacy." Some officials agreed with the move. In a statement, Ryan Walters, the superintendent of Oklahoma's schools, said he applauded the Trump administration for "taking bold action to eliminate these misguided programs." Oklahoma had planned to spend $1.9 million a year to help teachers, community members, and clinicians get retrained to work as mental health staff in schools before the state lost its funding. "These grants were never about addressing real mental health needs, they were about pushing a political agenda into our classrooms," Walters said in the statement, adding that his education agency was "forced" to apply for the money by state lawmakers. "We made our opposition clear then, and we stand by it today." Other state officials condemned the cuts. In Colorado, Jeremy Meyer, a spokesperson for the state's education agency, said the state was "deeply disappointed" by the Trump administration's decision to end Colorado's grant, which was expected to total $7.5 million over five years. Now the state will get just $1.5 million. The state was still rolling out its program to help schools recruit and retrain mental health staff so "no funds had yet been distributed to the field," Meyer wrote. Jill Underly, Wisconsin's state superintendent, said in a news release that the decision to eliminate $8 million of the state's planned $10 million grant was "indefensible" at a time "when communities are urgently asking for help." Already, she wrote, the federal grant had helped Wisconsin schools hire an additional 350 mental health staffers and helped enroll 500 new graduate students in the University of Wisconsin's certification program. "Kids don't get a chance to do-over their school experience while the federal government recalibrates its political agenda," Underly wrote. "These disruptions need to stop." Chalkbeat's New York bureau chief Amy Zimmer contributed reporting. This story was produced by Chalkbeat and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
$1 billion in school mental health grants won't be renewed; PA organizations are worried
(WHTM) – The Strong Minds, Bright Futures is a statewide partnership of over 60 organizations dedicated to improving youth mental health across Pennsylvania. They are strongly urging the Department of Education to reconsider the decision to cut $1 billion in federal grants supporting school-based mental health services. 'I think many of our kids, our families and even our teachers and principals don't yet understand the negative impact that this is going to have,' said CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters, Marcus Allen. Advocates say if this decision is not reversed, it will leave more than 250,000 students across the Commonwealth without mental health support. Families will lose access to school counselors, social workers, and programs designed to support students' well-being and prevent youth suicide. 'The Trump administration taking a wrecking ball to this funding that provides these critical services for students who are experiencing behave, role and emotional challenges. It's incredibly shortsighted,' said Chris Lilienthal with the Pennsylvania State Education Association. This funding stems from a law passed in 2022 following the tragic shooting in Uvalde, Texas. The law is called the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. 'It was designed to help schools hire mental health professionals including counselors and social workers,' said Allen. 36 schools across Pennsylvania received funding, including four in the Midstate. Senator John Fetterman shared a statement with abc27: 'We're facing a mental health crisis in this country, and I don't know any Pennsylvanian who thinks our kids have the mental health support system they need in our classrooms. As a senator, but more importantly, as a parent, I'm working to improve access and increase the number of counselors in our schools. Instead, the Trump administration is gutting the very program that would make these improvements possible. It's a cruel move that will only hurt our kids. I'm calling on the administration to immediately reverse course.' Department of Education Deputy Assistant Secretary, Madi Biedermann said in a statement: 'The Department decided not to continue funding these grants beyond the initial award terms. These grants are intended to improve American students' mental health by funding additional mental health professionals in schools and on campuses. Instead, under the deeply flawed priorities of the Biden Administration, grant recipients used the funding to implement race-based actions like recruiting quotas in ways that have nothing to do with mental health and could hurt the very students the grants are supposed to help. We owe it to American families to ensure that tax-payer dollars are supporting evidence-based practices that are truly focused on improving students' mental health.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Trump cuts threaten mental health resources for Tacoma school students
After the Trump administration announced cuts to a program that funded mental health resources for students at Tacoma Public Schools, staff say the loss of the funds would be a significant detriment to a student body that contends with higher rates of anxiety, depression and trauma than other students in Washington. Tacoma Public Schools received a grant under the School-Based Mental Health Services Grant Program from the Department of Education in 2022, providing it with $6,066,390 over five years to pay for 36 mental health clinicians to provide resources and care for students. The grant is the result of the 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which lawmakers passed in response to growing concerns about student mental health after a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas that year. Pierce County's biggest school district had been using the funds, which it was supposed to receive in roughly $1 million chunks each academic year, to provide around 3,000 students at Tacoma Public Schools with access to mental health care, according to the district. The Department of Education has notified districts that were receiving the money that they will have until Dec. 31 of this year to utilize the funds, meaning the mental health resources will remain in place until then. But TPS won't receive the remaining $2,655,740 it was supposed to receive for 2026 and 2027. The bipartisan legislation from 2022 doled out $1 billion in grants to school districts to address youth mental health. The letter notifying grantees about the cuts stated that 'funding for programs that reflect the prior administration's priorities and policy preferences conflict with those of the current administration' and could 'violate the letter or purpose of federal civil rights law,' EdWeek reported. Laura Allen, director of Whole Child for the district, said the district is exploring other opportunities to fund the resource after the money runs out in December. 'We have this runway to explore alternative sources, so we're actively working on that,' Allen told The News Tribune. 'There's an appeals process, so we're in the process of engaging in that process. We've also alerted our congressional delegation and hope that there's some possible advocacy there. It's the right thing to do for kids, and we aren't giving up.' The program allowed for school staff to identify students who could benefit from additional mental health counseling and recommend them to one of the 36 support staff who are funded by the grant to meet with students in regular counseling sessions or to identify whether they could benefit from other resources, Allen said. Mental health specialists who provided support to Tacoma students came from local organizations like Mary Bridge Children's Hospital's Youth Engagement Services. Ashley Mangum, director for kids mental health in Pierce County for Mary Bridge, said the program provided three specialists who served students at 23 middle and high schools in the district last year and this year has served 468 students across the district so far. Mangum said the resource has been crucial in helping kids with their mental health before issues they're contending with escalate to crisis level. 'Our system is designed to be reactive, to only be able to manage crisis,' she told The News Tribune. 'Not having access to these services is going to prevent our opportunities to intervene earlier for kids.' The potential loss of the program also comes as the city of Tacoma contends with a spike in youth homicides – four among people 18 and under killed since the start of 2025. Mangum and Allen said that highlighted the need for resources like the ones that the grant funded. 'We know our kids aren't without traumas,' Allen said. 'How do we help them navigate that and be able to come be in class and engage in their learning brain and then have this successful future in front of them? It's everything.' Tracie Barnett, a clinical social worker and mental health specialist with Mary Bridge, has worked with hundreds of students across Tacoma Public Schools' middle and high schools as part of the federal grant. Barnett said she's noticing higher rates of anxiety, depression and trauma amongst the students she works with as they contend with the lingering effects of the pandemic, when some were forced to quarantine in toxic households. 'My clients don't even really care about politics. My clients aren't Republican, they aren't Democrat,' Barnett told The News Tribune. 'This is money that the government, all parties agreed that our youth needed and it's devastating to have it taken away when I feel like we're at this peak of a mental health crisis.'
Gulf Today
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Gulf Today
Don't end programmes that support students
Sarah Lindstrom Johnson, Tribune News Service On April 15, another school shooting rocked Texas; four students were wounded before the 17-year-old shooter surrendered. Shockingly, the shooting occurred at the same Dallas high school where a student was shot in the leg by another student a year earlier. According to the K-12 School Shootings Database, 95 school shootings have already occurred so far in 2025, through May 13. While still far too many, this number, representing half a school year, is on trend to be lower than in recent years, which saw more than 250 incidents annually. One factor contributing to this decline might be a law passed by Congress in 2022 in response to the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting. The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act invested in school safety, including grants to help schools hire mental health care providers who support student well-being. A 2024 report from the Center for American Progress credited 'new gun laws and accountability measures' included in the act as one reason for a decline in the summer surge in gun violence rates. Yet, President Donald Trump's US Department of Education just canceled $1 billion in funding for school mental health programs tied to this law. Now, many jobs created by the act will be lost. The Trump administration, in ordering this funding cut, argued that the program ran afoul of its aversion to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programming, though policy experts and education leaders have disputed that reasoning. What's not in dispute: Students will pay the price. In 2021, the year before the passage of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, 88% of school administrators felt they couldn't effectively provide mental health services. The Act addressed an important need for an essential goal — building a safe school environment where students feel supported. School safety is about much more than preventing shootings. It's about fostering a sense of security and belonging that enables students to thrive academically, socially and emotionally. It's about being free from bullying and having support systems in place when life — inside and outside of the classroom — gets tough. Research shows that feeling connected to school is a crucial factor in long-term student success, from academic achievement to mental health. Indeed, emotional safety is just as urgent a concern as physical safety. And yet, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, around 40% of adolescents report feeling 'so sad or hopeless for the past two weeks that they have stopped doing some of their usual activities.' Fortunately, many states are recognizing the importance of mental health. As of 2019, 40 states required assessments of school climate, a concept the Department of Education defines as encompassing safety, student engagement and a supportive school environment. Most state education departments and schools embrace a model known as a multi-tiered system of supports, or MTSS, which provides a framework for addressing students' academic and behavioral needs. MTSS offers programs and curricula that promote development for all students, as well as additional services for those students who require extra help. However, despite evidence that MTSS improves outcomes and is cost-effective, schools still face challenges in identifying students with additional needs, implementing evidence-based programs and connecting students to external resources when necessary. The biggest barrier? A lack of trained staff. Student safety and mental health programs are funded by a patchwork of federal grants, state programs and district allocations. The temporary nature of this funding means that schools must continually compete with each other for limited resources. Smaller and rural schools, with less administrative capacity, often lose out. This is why the loss of these grants is such a blow. A 2024 study of school mental health professionals found that their activities each day include spending time responding to crises, engaging with student discipline, supporting school climate, safety planning and threat assessment and referring students and families to outside services. These professionals are doing essential work, often with far too few resources. So the question remains: Given that school shootings are down after three years where over 300 incidents happened, is now really the time to pull back support? The answer should be clear: If we want safe schools, we must invest in what makes them safe.
