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As Pa. schools struggle with student mental health needs, lawmakers look to remove barriers

Patriot-News - 8/25/2021

A recognition that students’ mental health needs have been exacerbated by COVID-19-related issues prompted state lawmakers on Wednesday to focus attention on finding ways to help schools meet that need.

The House Children & Youth and Education committes held a joint hearing to hear about barriers that stand in the way of ensuring students receive that help.

“It’s essential to know how schools identify and assist a student with mental health needs, and discuss how those services are funded,” said Children and Youth Committee Chairwoman Sheryl Delozier, R-Cumberland County. “As the state funding flows to schools through our counties, we need to make sure there is an open line of communication and schools see the dollars to serve our children.”

Among those who testified was West Shore School District Superintendent Todd Stoltz. He spoke of how the district has had to contract for additional mental and behavioral health services for students with each passing year. Often, the district has to pick up the tab.

“We still have [insurance] providers and carriers that will not pay and cover services that occur in a school-based setting,” Stoltz said. “You talk about barriers that still exist today. That is a real and existing barrier that if we could remove, we’d love to do it.”

Failing to do so creates additional barriers including getting students to appointments with mental health service providers outside the school building and disrupting a student’s education to go to those appointments.

House Education Committee Chairman Curt Sonney, R-Erie County, agreed that issue needs to be addressed.

“We task our schools with almost parenting our students,” he said.

To layer the cost of providing mental health services to services on top of everything else they do because insurance companies won’t pay for school-based mental health services, Sonney said, “that’s what needs to change.”

Sherri Smith, the state’s acting Deputy Secretary of Elementary and Secondary Education, outlined actions the department has taken to assist schools in addressing students’ mental health needs following 17 months of disrupted learning due to the pandemic.

They include receiving a $1 million federal grant to study over two years the impact of COVID-19 on K-12 students and using some federal COVID-19 relief to support initiatives addressing students’ social-emotional and mental health needs.

Smith said the department is urging school districts to direct some of the federal aid they received to hire more mental health consultants and staff to help students return to in-person education.

Rep. Mark Longietti of Mercer County, the ranking Democrat on the House Education Committee, voiced a concern about what happens when that money runs out.

Smith said districts have until September 2024 to spend the federal COVID-19 relief dollars they received “so let’s hope that that desire or that need for that intensity calms down and we go to what would be a more normal year for our students in two years.”

Jan Murphy may be reached at jmurphy@pennlive.com. Follow her on Twitter at @JanMurphy.

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