The school board wants to reject mental health services for no good reason. 

The meeting in August over the district’s strategic plan concluded this selfish and unreasonable thinking. 

As someone who has used the mental health services offered, taking them away jeopardizes students. I used them during a point in my life where I had lost a parent and had no one to turn to during school.

Taking that away can put a student’s mental health in such a low point that it affects the school as a whole, especially after Covid-19. 

According to Inside Higher Ed and College Pulse, 65% of students surveyed reported having fair or poor mental health, but 63% of those students graded their school’s response as a C or lower. 

Already many students believe that mental health services are subpar, so why take them away?

The board should be prioritizing making them better, rather than taking them away. 

Keeping the social-emotional learning promotes a healthy environment for students to accept other students, and educators can promote a safe learning environment.

If you strip that away, students become less likely to turn in work, test scores will drop and overall attendance will plummet. 

No student should be left alone to their own struggles, especially when a school’s priority is supposed to be the students.