“When is the next episode going to happen?”
“They took my license away from missing so much school. No one ever asked me why I miss so much.”
“I don’t need to go to school. I just need someone to help me figure out the best way to handle all of the crazy stuff I’ve been through in my life and to convince me I’m not crazy.”
These were some of the anonymous comments that Lloyd Memorial High School counselor Jen Glass shared from students at her school. Glass has worked as a counselor for 24 years at three different school districts.
From her experience, the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated an ongoing mental health crisis plaguing students. To combat the spread of the virus, school districts relegated student’s classroom instruction to Zoom calls, completely alien from their traditional learning experiences.
“We had no time to prepare our students for this crisis,” Glass said. “Students who were already living with challenges that came from mental health issues. We’re now dealing with trauma on top of trauma that was already there.”
Conner senior Heng Yang spoke on the challenges and negative after-effects of non-traditional learning from a student’s perspective.
“Coming out of non-traditional learning has delayed social development, increased isolation between peers and reduced access to vital social emotional support,” Yang told LINK nky. “Social distancing has made connection difficult when conversations are over Zoom.”
Educational cooperatives and the Kentucky state government also noticed this crisis. To address this, the governor’s office connected the Northern Kentucky Cooperative for Educational Support with $13.3 million in federal funding from the U.S. Department of Education over five years to expand access to mental health services for 19 Northern Kentucky public school districts. Overall, this will affect up to 65,000 Northern Kentucky school districts.
“This grant will create a pipeline that will strive to take that stigma out, create a positive lens for kids and add more resources into our foundation in our schools so that we can take that stigma away and create resources that our teachers and our principals and our students so desperately need,” said Northern Kentucky Cooperative for Educational Support Executive Director Amy Razor.
Kentucky Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman was on hand at the Northern Kentucky Cooperative for Educational Support headquarters in Cold Spring to announce the funding initiative. Coleman was joined by Glass, Yang, Razor, Beechwood student Evan Duncan and Bellevue Middle & High School Principal Tiffany Hicks.
“Creating access and opportunity to students who maybe didn’t have it otherwise, to be able to have someone to talk to, a shoulder to lean on and an adult to listen and help them to get through some really tough times,” Coleman said.
In addition, Coleman promoted the Team Kentucky Student Mental Health Initiative — a series of 10 regional mental health action summits across Kentucky in collaboration with the Family Resource and Youth Service Centers and Kentucky Department of Behavioral Health. The summits were led entirely by students.
“My job has always been to tee the students up and to step aside,” Coleman said. “But one important lesson that this old civics teacher got to impart on our students is that whether we’re looking at state and federal funding, or legislation, executive orders or how to impact policy language, there is more than one way to skin a cat.”
The students developed the discussion questions, facilitated the conversations, analyzed different data sets and crafted recommendations.
Nearly 400 students who participated in the summits provided recommendations to improve overall student mental health:
- Include and elevate student voices.
- Provide comprehensive suicide prevention.
- Allow excused mental health abscenses.
- Expand access to mental health services and treatment.
- Increase mental health awareness and education.
- Increase and improve professional development.
Those findings were then presented by student leaders and Coleman to federal government agencies, state agencies and the Kentucky Board of Education.
Hicks said Coleman’s comments “hit really close to home.” She emphasized the importance of having more mental health professionals on staff at schools so they could be better equipped to help a greater number of students.
“Each day the amazing educators keep showing up to help chip away slowly but surely,” Hicks said. “We are still in dire need of additional resources and personnel to help us accomplish our goal to give each student exactly what they need to be engaged, equipped and empowered in their education and lives.”
Kentuckians in crisis can now connect with suicide prevention, mental health and substance abuse counselors by dialing 988.
