Schools are on the front lines of the national mental health emergency recently declared by the American Academy of Pediatrics. Educators, it seems, expected the crisis.
They know kids, after all. Budget decisions made long before children and youth returned to in-person, full-time school anticipated that children undergoing a year and a half of isolation, deprivation, stress — and in many cases, trauma and grief — would return to school with a range of social, emotional and mental health needs.
