Bills aim to curb losses of school health funds
By: Mary Ann Koruth
NorthJersey.com
USA Today Network - New Jersey
..... Two draft bills proposed by U.S. Representative Josh Gottheimer D-Tenafly, aim to blunt the impact of the Trump administration's canceling $1 billion in federal K-12 mental health funding that had been approved by Congress.
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The Trump administration last month [04/2025] canceled money allocated to the school-based Mental Health Services Grant Program, which Congress approved in a bipartisan push to help students in crisis after a deadly elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, by a former student left 19 students and two teachers dead in May 2022.
..... The shouter's social media posts and obsession with violence called attention to the need to improve support for teenagers' mental health. That drove the Biden administration's passage of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act as a compromise between gun-safety goals and youth mental health needs.
..... The $1 billion grant program was designed to help schools and state education departments hire new counselors and train staff members to meet student needs.
..... "Back in the day you swept the things under the rug," Gottheimer, a Democrat contender in New Jersey's race for governor, said at School 4 in Fort Lee on May 15. [2025] "The stresses that our children are facing are much tougher today," [05/15/2025]
he said, noting that while these investments are "necessary ... somehow, the Trump administration does not see it that way."
..... Vivek Murthy, the former U.S. surgeon general had already identified adolescent depression and anxiety as a "devastating" problem in 2021, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has released research pointing to the COVID-19 pandemic's impact on mental health crisis among children and youth.
Two bills
..... Gottheimer announced that he is drafting two bills yet to be introduced in Congress.
..... The first bill, the Preparing for Our Futures Act, aims to incentive becoming a school psychologist by giving full-time students enrolled in a degree program a stipend of $8,000 to cover educational costs and address the national shortage of school psychologists available for schools to hire.
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The recommended ratio of students to counselors is 250:1, Gottheimer said. New Jersey's ratio of counselors to students in schools is 659:1 he said, but still better than many other state and nationwide numbers.
..... The second bill, the Saving Student with Software Act, would help districts pay for software that flags schools about a mental health crisis by tracking students' Internet use on school devices.
..... The software would address suicide prevention and would be installed on devices provided by schools to inform school personnel if a student types a word or phase related to self-harm or suicide.
$15 million effort in NJ
..... The U.S. Education Department informed School-based Mental Health Services Grant recipients in letters sent April 29 [2025] that the grants violated civil rights laws and, in some cases were an "inappropriate sue of federal funds," USA Today reported.
..... "The New Jersey Department of Education was in year three of implementing a five-year, $15 million effort to expand access to mental health professionals in our schools. T Hat project will now have to end two years early," Governor Phil Murphy said in a statement. "This move from
the U.S. Department of Education represents a significant step backward.'
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Critics viewed the move as part of Trump's anti-DEI push. Schools that serve marginalized students, who are often also in high-poverty areas populated by Hispanic and Black families, often try to hire counselors form similar backgrounds to make students feel more comfortable and cerate a stronger connection. This was highlighted in the grant guidelines, which said schools could look for counselors form "diverse backgrounds or who are from communities served."
..... "The grant specifically aims to increase the number of and capacity of mental health professionals by funding training, internships and partnerships with local universities," said Laura Fredrick, a spokesperson for the state Education Department, by "expanding the number of school psychologists, school counselors and school social workers in districts with increased poverty rates and shortage of school-based mental helaht professionals."
..... "New Jersey was awarded the five-year, $15 million grant in December 2022 and, as required by the federal program, the state committed an additional $1 million annually in state funds, bringing the entire program to $20 million," Fredrick said. In just the first two school years, the program to serve an additional 40,000 students statewide, and 68 new school-based mental health professionals were hired. Ten "high-need" school districts are enrolled in the program, she said.
..... The New Jersey Education Department was listed as having received $2.7 million in the grant's first year of funding form the federal department. The Passaic Board of education won $279,059 that year for the same grant. It is unclear how much of that funding has already been spent.