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House Co-Sponsorship Memoranda
House of Representatives
Session of 2021 - 2022
Regular Session
MEMORANDUM
| Posted: | March 22, 2022 04:03 PM |
|---|---|
| From: | Representative Jason Ortitay |
| To: | All House members |
| Subject: | Student Mental Health Focused Grants |
| In the near future I plan to introduce legislation that would amend the Public School Code to establish Student Mental Health Focused Grants. Specifically, my bill would amend the current School Safety and Security Grant Program, housed in the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency (PCCD), to drive available grant funding out to public schools with a sole focus on student mental health needs. As we all know, addressing student mental health needs was a growing concern even before the arrival of COVID-19 compounded and exacerbated the issue. Having sat on the PCCD School Safety and Security Committee which awards the safety and security grant funding and having participated in the Committee discussions and reviewed the needs expressed by public schools in grant applications, I know firsthand that the Legislature was right to include some mental health purposes in the existing grant program. However, grants under the existing grant program can be awarded for an extremely wide array of safety and security needs such as various security assessments, planning, equipment, personnel, and all manner of positive programing. While I still believe that the broad flexibility in the current grant program was a good idea that allowed communities to decide locally about the most important use of that grant funding, the arrival of COVID-19 has elevated student mental health needs and revealed a crisis which must be addressed at the state level, not just the local level. Therefore, the language in my bill follows the same pattern set by the Legislature in June of 2020, when the existing grant program was amended to focus exclusively on responding to COVID-19, by amending the program again to focus solely on addressing student mental health needs. Under this legislation each public school entity in which a student is enrolled full-time will receive a minimum grant of $40,000 and an additional amount based on the average daily membership of the public school entity. Importantly, this proposal also maintains flexibility at the community level for the grants to be used for a variety of purposes specifically relating to student mental health needs. The bill would take effect for the upcoming 2022-2023 school year and is written to allow the Legislature to continue this mental health focus for the grants in future years as well. This legislation also provides swift but manageable timelines to ensure that these mental health dollars are in public school hands before the new school year begins to ensure a timely impact. Please join me in cosponsoring this important legislation to assist public schools in addressing the critical mental health needs of our students. |
Introduced as HB2468