A school social worker makes calls from her desk in California's Chula Vista Elementary School District. The district is served by the San Diego County Office of Education, which was among the education entities that lost federal funding to hire and train more mental health workers in schools. (Zaydee Sanchez for Chalkbeat)
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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 a Tuesday night email to members of Congress.
The Education Department has the authority to stop funding multi-year 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.
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