Tell Secretary McMahon—Mental Health Matters!

On April 29th, the Trump administration cancelled $1 billion in school mental health grants. These funds were allocated as part of a 2022 bipartisan anti-gun violence bill passed in response to the horrific Uvalde School shootings that claimed the lives of 19 students and 2 teachers, which once more brought the issues of gun violence and mental health to the forefront of the national education conversation. 

In response to questions about the cuts, a Trump-appointed Department of Education official claimed the grants, which provide more school psychologists and mental health professionals to students across the country, are being cancelled because they “reflect the prior administration’s priorities and policy preferences.” This, despite the fact that the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act was, as its name implies, a joint effort between Democrats and Republicans to address the multiple mental health crises faced by the nation’s young people. 

Schools have created plans and already hired staff to support the mental health of their students with the money from these grants, which they expected to be able to use for years to come. When the federal government reneges on its commitments, real peoples’ lives are thrown into chaos. The professional lives of staff, the mental wellbeing of students, and the climates of schools will be directly harmed as a result of this. 

Write to Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to call for the continued funding of grants that put more mental health professionals in schools to support the health of students, and to mitigate the risks of in-school violence that our students have become far too familiar with.