SOCIAL WORKERS BADLY NEEDED IN OUR SCHOOLS
Are our students being primed to be imprisoned? In 2016, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights found a Black preschool child is 3.6 times more likely to receive one or more out of school suspensions than a White preschool child. It also found that a K-12 Black student is 3.8 times more likely to receive out of school suspensions than a White student.
Reports also indicate these same behaviors were also seen in White peers that resulted in less severe consequences. The zero tolerance movement sees our children as criminals or suspects rather than as struggling youth who have a tremendous amount of potential. They are seen as violators rather than children who need guidance and help. This becomes even more troubling when you factor in the number of districts that have oncampus police or district-run police departments.
When a district utilizes school resource officers (SROs), they are more likely to outsource disciplinary problems to the officers. This funnels children toward the juvenile justice system, making it more likely for the child to end up with a criminal record. A study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found 40 percent of children who entered the juvenile justice system ended up in prison by the age of 25. Schools are, therefore, grooming future prisoners by using SROs.
The placement of SROs in the schools system is a punitive, reactive approach while increasing mental health services in the school setting is a supportive, proactive approach. The National Alliance on Mental Illness found that 70 percent of incarcerated youth had at least one diagnosable mental illness. This research illustrates that youth who are not obtaining the mental health services they need are likely to end up in the justice system. There is a clear need for improved identification and access to services for youth with mental health needs before considering the need for additional resource officers within the school setting. Increasing the presence of SROs within schools increases disciplinary efforts, further complicating and overwhelming the justice system, without truly helping youth in need.
The current system is inadequate and financially ineffective. The average cost of placing one young person in the justice system for a single year has been estimated to be $148,767; this incurs governmental costs of up to $21 billion per year. Every year, the government and taxpayers spend billions of dollars in detaining mentally ill youth instead of providing them with treatment. Schools contribute to the problem by not hiring mental health professionals to meet the needs of their students. We need to enlist the help of licensed clinical social workers or other mental health professionals to provide school-wide interventions and training for students and staff, as well as help students in crisis. Inappropriate behavior does not always need to be responded to with punishment, especially by a uniformed police officer.
Mental health professionals can provide a safe space for marginalized students to process feelings of depression and anxiety. Social workers, in particular, are also well-suited to
Students who are not obtaining the mental health services they need are likely to end up in the justice system.
addressing adverse experiences such as abuse, domestic violence, substance use, parental incarceration, separations and divorce, and emotional or physical neglect.
Schools across the country are not properly staffed with mental health professionals. Since 2012, the National Association of Social Workers has recommended that schools are staffed with one full-time social worker for every 250 general education students. No state meets this minimal requirement. Instead, some schools are staffed with one full-time social worker for every 1,000 students while others fail to hire any social workers at all. The time, energy and funds being put into increasing the number of school resource officers should be first spent on properly staffing schools with mental health professionals.
There is an urgent demand to improve access to mental health services for youth. Using the school setting to screen all youth, identify those in need of services and provide access to treatment is ultimately the most effective way to ensure that youth in need of mental health treatment receive it. “Mental health first” is a new mindset that meets this need with proper staffing of schools with social workers, not SROs. “Mental health first” bridges the gap between school- and community-based mental health providers to meet the mental health needs of youth in an efficient and effective way. With this mindset, all youth, regardless of religion, race, sexual orientation or economic status, have equal opportunity to access mental health services.
is a central officer resource teacher with the San Diego Unified School District and owner of ABC Educational Consultants. She lives in San Carlos. is a licensed clinical social worker with the Hemet Unified School District. She lives in Temecula. is a licensed clinical social worker at the Round Lake School District and a professor with George Williams College of Aurora University. She lives in Round Lake, Illinois.
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