U.S. Department of Education Funds Mental Health Interventions for K-12 students in Minnesota. Your child may be next!
by Barb Anderson, CPL Education board member
Tax-payer funded K-12 schools are giving up their primary mission as educational institutions and making room for multiple mental health initiatives that are increasingly taking the place of academics. Parents, these initiatives are happening right under your nose without your knowledge or consent.
Amanda Nelson, writer of “Innovating mental health support in schools,” reports in the Fall 2024 issue of CEHD CONNECT, the magazine of the U of M College of Education and Human Development, that many school districts are having a difficult time dealing with what she describes as “unprecedented mental health needs” and a “rising tide of mental health challenges” in the K-12 schools. Two recently funded five-year projects say they are trying to change that.
Projects LIME (Leading Improvements in Mental-Health & Equity) and AWARE (Advancing Well-being and Reifying Equity) are funded by the U.S. Department of Education and are housed in the College of Education and Human Development (CEHD) Department of Educational Psychology. These two projects were created to “help address growing mental health concerns in schools.” Amanda states that as of 2022, “nearly 44 percent of Minnesota students in grades 8, 9, and 11 reported experiencing emotional distress.” To address this, the school psychology program was recently awarded more than $11 million by the U. S. Department of Education to advance mental health supports in taxpayer funded K-12 schools.
Because there is a shortage of school mental health professionals, graduate students who are enrolled in the school psychology program can apply to be graduate assistants (GAs) in partner districts who are paid for 10 to 20 hours per week as they work toward their degrees. They provide and expand mental health services that include “facilitating mental health screenings, identifying and implementing social-emotional curricula, helping schools establish behavioral expectations” as well as “individual and group interventions.” Remember, these GAs are not licensed psychologists.
Parents do not realize that a different set of views regarding gender are being promoted to children in the K-12 schools. Mental health psychologists are counseling school-age children on gender identity and sexual behavior on a regular basis and promoting an aggressive, growing sexual agenda that is changing the culture and climate in the public schools—sometimes leading children into irreversible and dangerous medical procedures. It’s no wonder we have increasing mental health needs—as well as increasing academic needs. School psychologists are implementing and evaluating large-scale mental health intervention efforts. But where are the large-scale academic intervention efforts?
We are in the middle of an unprecedented literacy crisis. Too many students can fervently text but cannot read. And they don’t know real grammar or real history. There are only so many hours in the school day and it appears that mental health initiatives are taking more and more of those precious learning hours in the classroom. That is not a good return for Minnesota tax dollars. Tragically, it is the children of Minnesota who are being short-changed.