Republicans' school safety plan is short on promised mental health aid

Expanding mental health care for Texas children became a rallying cry among Republican politicians in the days after the Uvalde school shooting, and in late June, they made it part of their plan to keep Texas schoolchildren safe.

Unfortunately, it’s a small part.

Just $10.5 million of the $105 million school safety plan announced by Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick is earmarked for children’s mental health this year, with the rest planned for school security fortifications, including $50 million to buy bulletproof shields for police officers.

Investing more in children’s mental health could help prevent school shootings while helping to improve the lives of countless Texas kids. In many school shooting cases, the perpetrators are young males who were bullied, isolated or showed signs of anti-social behavior that might have been addressed with earlier mental health intervention. The profile of the 18-year-old shooter in Uvalde reportedly checked all those boxes.

A new report by Texas Cares for Children, a nonprofit advocacy group based in Austin, reveals a decade-long deterioration in the mental health ofyoung Texans, and shows an urgent need for expanded mental health services. The report found that from 2009 to 2019, the number of Texas high school students reporting they had attempted suicide jumped 35 percent. Between 2015 and 2022, rates of major depression among Texas youth soared by 73 percent. More than 2,600 Texas children are waiting for mental health services through the state’s YES Waiver program. The report also warns that federal funding for youth mental health services provided during the pandemic is expiring, which will leave more gaps in care for kids in Texas.

During the past two legislative sessions, state lawmakers from both parties approved bills to provide additional mental health counseling for Texas youth, including expanded access to tele-mental health services and a requirement that community mental health centers dedicate a counselor as a resource for school districts. We applaud those efforts, but the state needs to do more. Texas lawmakers should not only direct money to help those students most at risk for violent behavior as the $10.5 million set-aside in the governor's school safety plan for2022 does, but also expand accessduring the upcoming legislative session to services that help other Texas children battle depression, suicidal thoughts and other harmful impulses.

That means shoring up the ability of publicly-funded community mental health centers to deliver crisis services, individual and family counseling, medication management, family peer support, and coordinating of services to provide comprehensive care for families.  These services are proven to help kids with mental health concerns and reduce hospitalizations and involvement with the juvenile justice and foster care systems, Josette Saxton, director of mental health policy for Texans Care for Children, told our board.

Texas schools need more money for counselors and teacher training to help students deal with bullying and conflict resolution, but the state legislature resists giving money to the Texas Education Association or local school districts for this purpose.

Saxton said mental health funding included in the recently announced school safety package is geared only toward youth with especially violent or anti-social tendencies.

“Those investments are not really helping school districts to address the day-to-day problems that they’re seeing among all kids," she said.

Sen. Jose Menendez, D-San Antonio, has worked extensively on mental health issues in the legislature, including sponsoring bills to address cyber-bulling. He told our board he's planning to introduce a bill that would help increase the number of counselors available to Texas schoolchildren. He hopes that after the Uvalde massacre, Republicans will make good on their pledge to address youth mental health, especially inside the walls of schools.

"The reality is that our kids need to access mental health in school because a lot of parents don't have the resources for it," Menendez said

We urge all Texans who care about the welfare of the state's children to contact their lawmakers and ask them to support bills that will give kids more tools to work though their emotional struggles.

The declining mental health of Texas children outlined in the Texas Cares for Children report should worry us all. We hope the Texas Legislature will consider the nonprofit's recommendations and give schools and mental health providers the resources they need.

Our children deserve no less.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas kids are increasingly depressed or suicidal. They need help.