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This article discusses the importance of teaching students to wash their hands and cover their coughs to prevent the spread of sickness. I knew that this was important, but from this article I learned that preventing sickness also involves classroom maintenance like cleaning and changing filters regularly.

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The Health Trends Schools Should Be Watching This Year

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Poor health leads students to miss school. But there are strategies schools can adopt to keep kids healthy.

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From this article I learned that there is a debate on whether schools should screen students for mental health issues, or if they should simply address common causes such as cell phones, diet, and exercise. This is not something that I was aware of, I also didn't know that some states have already started requiring mental health screenings in all of their schools.

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Two members of President Donald Trump's Cabinet recently called for improving students' mental health through a focus on "strong families, nutrition and fitness, and hope for the future," as they took aim at mental health screenings schools use to identify students in need of support.

But their characterization of screenings as "medicalizing" young children's behavior and treating students "like patients" misrepresents a tool used in a growing number of schools, school psychologists said.

"Medicalizing the unique and sometimes unpredictable behavior of young children can create new stigmas that students might carry with them for life," the secretaries wrote. "We must make American children healthy again without treating them all like patients."

School-based mental health screenings are a growing strategy

Kennedy and McMahon inaccurately portrayed school mental health screenings, said Kelly Vaillancourt Strobach, the director of policy and advocacy for the National Association of School Psychologists. The screenings are not used to give students formal diagnoses, and schools don't provide clinical counseling or medication as a result, she said.

"These are not tools used to label kids," said Strobach, a former school psychologist.

Those interventions could be as simple as teaching students strategies to talk through conflicts or process grief after a family member's death, Strobach said.

If screenings flag more serious concerns that are backed up by other data, such as poor attendance, schools would share those results with parents and refer them to community organizations, like therapy providers, she said, but results from one survey are not used to support a clinical mental health diagnosis.

"These are not invasive, they don't take that long, and they help identify kids who may need a little extra support," Strobach said.

Patterns in the resulting data may also help schools identify whether schoolwide strategies, such as peer mentoring, are effective, supporters say.

Schools that use screenings should ensure they're developmentally appropriate, give parents and caregivers a chance to participate in the process, and ensure they have proper follow-up protocols in place when students show signs of distress, said Dr. Laura Erickson-Schroth, the chief medical officer for The Jed Foundation (JED), a nonprofit organization that promotes mental health and suicide prevention for teens and young adults.

"In order to effectively reach young people and prevent suicide, we have to meet young people where they are-and that includes schools," she wrote. "For many students, especially those in rural or under-resourced communities, school is the only door in."

Illinois will be the first state to require school mental health screenings

Kennedy and McMahon's criticism of Illinois' policy comes as Trump spars with Pritzker over unrelated matters, like a surge of federal immigration enforcement in Chicago.

Illinois will become the first state to require universal school mental health screenings as the result of a multiyear strategy Pritzker launched in 2022 to improve the state's behavioral-health system for children. The state will require schools to secure parental consent-either by requiring them to sign permission forms or allowing them to opt their children out.

Many Illinois districts already use screening tools, and their input helped the state design its policy, said Dana Weiner, the director of the Illinois Children's Behavioral Health Transformation Initiative.

Contrary to the secretaries' assertions, schools that use the screeners do not risk unnecessarily funneling healthy children into therapy, Weiner said.

"Screening tools are a public health tool used to detect problems that could potentially be life-threatening if they aren't treated," she said. "We don't have the desire or the resources to treat kids who don't need mental health treatment. This is a response to an outcry."

School psychologists stress the need for parental consent

Some school leaders have also said they have inadequate resources-not enough school counselors and psychologists, for example-to respond when mental health concerns are identified. Others say the screenings help them use those resources more effectively.

Criticisms contradict recommendations from the first Trump administration

The Education Department and the Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to requests for comment.

Kennedy and McMahon's opposition follows a pattern of the current Trump administration contradicting recommendations made by a handpicked federal school safety commission, chaired by former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, that held hearings around the country in Trump's first term. That report recommended strategies like social-emotional learning, which the current Education Department has criticized as a possible "veil for discrimination," and identifying students in need of early mental health interventions.

"Schools are a viable setting for screening, which could be incorporated just like visual and hearing screening," the commission wrote in the December 2018 report that was part of a federal response to school shootings in Parkland, Fla., and Santa Fe, Texas.

"Though we should not discount the necessary contributions of mental health professionals, we also can't forget the harms therapy can do when aggrandized into a 'system' that processes normal schoolchildren like patients in a sanatorium," they wrote.

But it's a false choice to say schools must either stress mental health interventions or healthy physical habits, like sleep and exercise, because those factors go hand in hand, mental health experts said. In fact, mental health screenings may help schools identify students who need help building healthy sleep habits or forming stronger relationships.

"Physical exercise and nutrition are essential to young people's emotional health, but mental health and suicide are complex and multifactoral and therefore, our approach has to be comprehensive and holistic," said Erickson-Schroth of JED. "It's not an either-or: Accessible mental health-care and life-skills education can-and should-co-exist with ensuring young people exercise and eat well."

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RFK Jr., McMahon Say School Mental Health Screenings Turn Students Into Patients

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The cabinet secretaries recently called for a focus on nutrition, exercise, and cellphone use to boost students' mental health.

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This article covers the impact that the pandemic has had on teachers' mental health. I knew that student mental health became a priority after COVID, but I wasn't aware at how little support was being given to the teachers despite them needing it just as much.

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Why teachers need, deserve mental health support - UND Today

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Students do better and schools are more stable when teachers are supported, UND scholar writes in The Conversation

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I learned that schools are starting to cut down of physical education requirements in higher grades as the article stated that 52% of high school students only attend once a week. This was shocking to me as health education is becoming more important while physical education seems to be declining.

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Why Schools Cut PE Despite Scientific Evidence of Academic Benefits

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Despite overwhelming evidence that PE enhances academic performance, American schools continue to reduce or eliminate PE programs.

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I learned that while mental health services are used in schools, there is a decline in how much is able to be offered. I was shocked to read that there was a decline in the amount of schools able to provide effective mental health care as well as schools that utilized federal grants to fund these programs.

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Press Release - Over Half of Public Schools Report Staffing and Funding Limit Their Efforts to Effectively Provide Mental Health Services to Students in Need - May 9, 2024