State Leaders Prioritize Student Mental Health

K-12 Dive covers the recent NASBE webinar “Supporting Student Mental Health during the Return to School.”

During a Wednesday virtual panel organized by the National Association of State Boards of Education, a group of state officials from California, Illinois and Kentucky suggested education leaders should prioritize supporting student mental health as schools reopen for in-person instruction and plan for the next school year.

State leaders should ask what existing policies can be used to support superintendents and districts during a return to schools, said Megan Blanco, director of Safe and Healthy Schools for NASBE and the discussion’s moderator. In that vein, many of the initiatives panelists cited as promising practices existed prior to the pandemic and were expanded or stressed in light of COVID-19.

Read more of the K-12 Dive story here.