This commentary is by Don Tinney, a high school English teacher who is president of Vermont-NEA, the state’s largest union.
As we enter the second year of the Covid-19 pandemic, Vermonters have reason to be proud of their commitment and sacrifices in mitigating the virus, keeping our infection rate one of the lowest in the world.
The low community spread of the virus, combined with the extraordinary efforts and flexibility of Vermont educators, allowed our schools to remain open for in-person instruction since September.
Political leaders across the nation — including President Biden and Gov. Scott — have called for students to return to school full-time. Since last March, efforts have been focused on the logistics of mitigating the virus and protecting everyone’s physical health. Attention is now being focused on the social and emotional well-being of our students, emphasizing mental health alongside physical health.
Political leaders calling for students to return to school full-time indicates that they not only see the essential, critical value of our public schools but that they know we must begin to have real conversations about the mental health of our children and youth. For too long, the stigma of mental illness has stifled serious public discourse about our emotional needs.
We often refer to a school as a learning community, but we must now see school as a healing community, an extension of our public health system. Every school must be a sanctuary for every student. From the time students step onto their school bus each morning, they must feel welcomed, included, and protected throughout their school experience.
Assuring that school is a healing community requires that we have school nurses available to every student. School nurses play a vital role in making sure every student receives at least a basic level of health care and in assisting families in negotiating the health care system within their community. A school nurse in every school sends an important message to every student: We are here to care for you.
At the start of the pandemic last spring, our food service workers, paraeducators and school bus drivers went above and beyond all expectations to provide nutritious meals to students. Covid-19 has taught us how important schools are in providing a nutrition lifeline to our children. Therefore, our organization strongly supports S.100, a bill that would promote the implementation of universal school meals, because educators know that hungry children cannot learn. Meeting the nutritional needs of every student proves that the public school is the bedrock of the community.
While tending to student health and nutritional needs, we must also tend to their mental health needs by expanding counseling services in our schools. The waiting lists for students in a mental health crisis have been too long since before the pandemic and we need an all-hands-on-deck approach to delivering the psychological services our students so desperately need today.
With this heightened awareness of the impact of stress and anxiety in the lives of our students, we must pay particular attention to the stress experienced by our Black, Indigenous and people of color students and staff. Last year, the American Psychological Association reported that suicide attempts among Black adolescents increased by 73 percent between 1991 and 2017. This is a crisis.
Educators and psychologists must work together to understand the trauma, depression and anxiety being experienced by students of color and increase their efforts to make counseling services and therapy widely available in every school building for every Vermont student.
Vermont educators have devoted their lives to meeting the needs of their students, as demonstrated by their tireless efforts in providing instruction and support in all types of creative ways during this pandemic. Vermont-NEA supports the passage of H.106, a bill that supports the transformation of schools becoming resource hubs to provide a broad range of easily accessed, well-coordinated supports and services to help students and families with increasingly complex needs and assuring equitable access to education opportunities.
We must continue to support legislation and programs that support working families. Our students and their families are experiencing stress created by the economics of low-wage jobs, homelessness, food insecurity and inadequate health care. The passage of the American Rescue Plan is a good start, but it is only a start.
If we want to lower the levels of stress and anxiety of our students, then we must lower the stress levels of families, especially those families who live with the chronic unpredictability of poverty.
One of the slogans of this pandemic has been “We’re all in this together.” As we move forward to a post-pandemic world, we must internalize that slogan and remain committed to one another as we take a collaborative approach to meeting the needs of our children and youth.
