Mental health crisis made worse by shortage of school staff members

President Biden’s budget proposes $1 billion in new funding for schools to hire counselors, school psychologists, and nurses – a big investment in arresting the mental health epidemic afflicting our young people.

There’s just one problem: there aren’t enough qualified people willing to fill those jobs.

Those of us who have been working in schools have seen student mental health challenges grow for years. The dislocations caused by public policy responses to COVID-19 made the problems worse while also pushing them into broader view.

In 2019, before the pandemic began, the Hopeful Futures Campaign reported that more than a third of high school students had “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness.” The CDC found that that number jumped to 44 percent during the pandemic. About one in 11 high school students reported having attempted suicide.

Schools have been racing to hire staff to help these kids, but it’s hard to find enough counselors, social workers, and psychologists who want to work in schools. We faced this problem in my own district. After the board agreed to fund additional counselors, nearly doubling the number we would have on staff, we simply couldn’t find the people to fill those roles.- READ MORE