Publisher's summary
We audited the following 20 school districts (Districts) to determine whether the Districts used resources to provide the mental health component of the New York Safe Schools Against Violence in Education Act (SAVE Act) training requirement to staff: Bellville-Henderson CSD, Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake CSD, Canandaigua City SD, Coxsackie Athens CSD, Crown Point CSD, Dover UFSD, Eden CSD, Goshen CSD, Greenport UFSD, Harborfields CSD, Livonia CSD, Malone CSD, Port Washington UFSD, Rye Neck UFSD, Schalmont CSD, Seaford UFSD, Unadilla Valley CSD, Waverly CSD, Wellsville CSD and West Genesee CSD. The 20 Districts we examined did not provide mental health training to all staff for the 2020-21 school year by September 15, 2020, as required by New York State Education Department (SED) regulations.
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Mental Health Training
School personnel are often the first to notice mental health problems and to
support the mental health of a district’s students. Providing staff with training
can assist staff in understanding the signs and symptoms of the most common
mental illnesses and being better prepared to identify problems early. A United
States Surgeon General advisory issued in December 2021 on the Youth Mental
Health Crisis reported that several national surveys of youths have shown major
increases in certain mental health symptoms.2 For example, from 2009 to 2019,
the number of high school students reporting persistent feelings of sadness
or hopelessness increased by 40 percent, while those seriously considering
attempting suicide increased by 36 percent. Further, a November 2020 report
from the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
indicated that beginning in April 2020, the proportion of children’s mental health-
related emergency department visits among all pediatric emergency department
visits increased and remained elevated through October.3 Compared with 2019,
the proportion of mental health-related visits for children aged five to 11 and 12 to
17 increased approximately 24 percent and 31 percent, respectively.
What Is the Mental Health Component of the SAVE Act Training for
All Staff?
The SAVE Act requires that all districts provide staff annual emergency response
plan training with a component on mental health. While the SAVE Act and
SED requirements state that the annual school safety training must include
a component on mental health, neither the SAVE Act nor SED requirements
directly address what topics should be included within the mental health training
component. Rather, SED issued guidance to all school districts that included
resources relating to mental health. Included within the resources was information
from the United States Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS)
addressing “what educators should know” regarding warning signs of mental
health problems, “whom to turn to,” and “how to access crisis support and other
mental health services” (Figure 1).
2 https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2021/12/07/us-surgeon-general-issues-advisory-on-youth-mental-health-
crisis-further-exposed-by-covid-19-pandemic.html
3 https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/pdfs/mm6945a3-H.pdf
2 Of f ic e of t he New York State Comptroller