Credit: (NJ Spotlight News)As emotional and behavioral difficulties exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic continue to affect children, several New Jersey school districts will receive additional funds to tackle those issues.
The state Department of Education announced Monday that 11 school districts will receive a combined $15 million to expand school-based mental health services for students. The districts will be tasked with training and placing more than 200 mental health professionals in their schools over five years.
The districts to get funding under the program are Perth Amboy, Hackensack, Jackson Township, Union Township, Bogota, Union City, Pinelands Regional, Cumberland Regional, Collingswood Borough, Gloucester Township and Hillside Township.
The Department of Education received the funding through the federal School-Based Mental Health Services Grant Program. The state selected school districts that have communities with higher levels of poverty and insufficient staffing of school psychologists, social workers and counselors, according to the National Association of School Psychologists, the American School Counselors Association and the School Social Work Association of America. In addition to increasing the number of mental health professionals working in school districts, the program also aims to increase the diversity of professionals who provide the school-based services to students, according to the Education Department.
The program, called the School-Based Mental Health Grant Program, will be focused on addressing the behavioral health needs of students in preschool through 12th grade. It will include training and placing more psychologists, counselors and social workers in elementary schools, middle schools and high schools.
Other efforts to improve services
The program goes into effect as the state continues to find new ways to address the mental health needs of students. The Department of Children and Families recently launched a website for its New Jersey Statewide Student Support Services (NJ4S) network. The network is aimed at offering mental health services to more students statewide by creating 15 hubs, or centers, staffed with mental health crisis prevention specialists and mental health counselors who will deliver services to schools, libraries, homes, community centers, social service agencies and faith-based organizations. State leaders allocated $43 million to the network in the latest state budget. That budget dedicates a total of more than $120 million to all mental and behavioral health care.
While the NJ4S network is still getting off the ground, through its website it is beginning to provide mental health supports, including in-person information sessions on how to manage back-to-school nerves and bullying-prevention assemblies, according to Jason Butkowski, a spokesperson for Department of Children and Families.
But even with these efforts, educators remain concerned about students’ mental health as the new school year gets underway.
Nationwide, the suicide rate among people aged 10-24 remained stable from 2001 to 2007 but increased by 62% from 2007 to 2021, according to a report issued in June by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Hackensack, Collingswood
The Hackensack Public School District is one of the 11 districts to share in the additional funding for mental health services.
“The demand [for mental health services in the district], I believe, is at an all-time high,” said Rosemary Marks, the assistant superintendent at Hackensack Public Schools.
Societal factors such as isolation caused by the pandemic, the pressures of constant digital and social media access, and families’ economic struggles have contributed to the mental health challenges for students, Marks said. And in the Hackensack schools, there is a direct correlation between these challenges and an increase in at-risk behaviors, with more students than ever before experiencing panic attacks, harassment, intimidation and bullying issues and the need for more suicide intervention, Marks said.
Hackensack Public Schools received $292,000 for the program’s first grant period, which started in June and lasts until Nov. 30, according to Marks. With that money, school officials have placed four social workers, through paid internships, in four different schools in the district. Additionally, the district is in the process of hiring a full-time social worker for Hackensack High School, Marks said.
Until now, the district had one school counselor and social worker for every 351 students, according to Marks. By Nov. 30, it expects to have one social worker for every 325 students, Marks said.
The need for more mental health support has also been felt in South Jersey schools, including Collingswood Public Schools, another district to receive funding under the new program. Last year, a wellness center was opened at Collingswood High School. The new state funding is an opportunity to provide more mental health support to students while continuing to develop the center, said Matthew Craig, the vice president of the Collingswood Public Schools Board of Education. Collingswood will receive $225,000 each year for the next five years, according to Craig.
“I’m … hopeful that this will help to educate teachers, too, about … who they can go out to if they realize that their student is experiencing something with mental health or maybe needs to talk to somebody, so that they [the teachers] don’t have to carry that full burden,” Craig said.
