MARY ANN WOLF: Supporting student mental health needs

Our schools strive to support the academic, social, and emotional learning of our students. These efforts include student supports through social workers, psychologists, counselors, and nurses in addition to teachers and other staff members. Even where student support personnel are in place, which is not the case in many of our schools, families and communities have long known the complexity and urgency of student mental health.

Most of you know a student, or many students, who struggle with mental health. While it is an important shift that mental health and the related supports are talked about more widely than ever before, we continue to struggle to provide the interventions and supports for our students even when we are aware of the needs.

Today, we are lifting up how COVID has shed light on student mental health challenges and how the traumas related to COVID have likely increased the students’ needs for mental health supports. Some districts in our state, including Iredell-Statesville Schools and Harnett County Schools, are overcoming obstacles -- pursuing creative and innovative ways to increase mental health services for students in their districts.

Students who come to school hungry, are living in poverty, have just experienced a traumatic event or have an unstable home life are not in a productive state to learn. Yet despite what we have come to understand, our state’s public schools are starved of the school support personnel who can help address some of these needs. Social workers, nurses, psychologists and counselors are critical to ensuring students can succeed in the classroom, but our state has neglected to direct the necessary resources to ensure they are in place at every school, and as a result, we are seeing massive shortages of these personnel statewide.

While some districts have been able to make mental health a priority, they did so through hard work, creativity, and finding scarce funds either within their budgets or through the philanthropic community in order to be able to do so. All of that effort should not be a requirement, especially with so many other needs in our schools.

As we strive to have an education system that ensures that all of our students graduate ready for college, career, and citizenship, we must acknowledge and act in accordance with the need for these integral supports for our students. They are not optional — addressing the needs of the whole child is critical to ensuring that each child reaches their potential.