With students heading back to school, mental health advocates and educators are waving a red flag after discovering Gov. Phil Murphy’s revised budget proposal cuts nearly $12 million to a state office providing school-based services for mental health counseling, sex education, suicide and substance abuse prevention. Advocates are calling the cuts unconscionable at a time when those issues among teens are on the rise. A spokesperson for the state says the services are offered in just a fraction of schools and can be found elsewhere. Dr. Eileen Kennedy Moore is a child psychologist based in Princeton and disagrees with that argument. She joins Senior Correspondent Briana Vannozzi.
How will kids be affected by the absence of school?
Anchor
An Emmy award-winning journalist, Briana Vannozzi serves as the anchor for NJ Spotlight News, the newsroom of NJ PBS. She's worked in several capacities since joining the news division in 2012, as interim anchor and senior correspondent after years of general assignment reporting as a multimedia journalist. Vannozzi began her television journalism career by cutting her teeth on New Jersey State House politics for New Jersey Network News, and later as a news radio correspondent at FM News 101.9 covering crime and politics in New York City. Her work has taken her to national presidential nominating conventions, Capitol Hill, up and down the East Coast and every corner of the Garden State. She's interviewed every New Jersey governor dating back to Jon Corzine and moderated numerous political debates and forums. Her work has also earned awards from the New Jersey Society of Professional Journalists and the Philadelphia Press Association. A Burlington County native, she's honored to be serving and covering her home state and raising her family there.