05/03/2025
After Uvalde, school mental health grants had bipartisan support. Now Trump is cutting them.
Schools will likely have to lay off social workers and counselors, and college programs designed to train mental health providers may shut down after the Trump administration decided it would stop funding grants created under a bipartisan law passed in response to mass school shootings.
The grants paid for 1,500 to 2,000 new mental health providers to work in schools across the U.S. in the first year alone.
If you have students of color in a school, you really do want adults in the building — teachers, school counselors, mental health supports — who are of the same race and ethnicity to be able to better understand where students are coming from and make sure that the interventions or supports that they receive are not based on bias, but are truly based upon the needs of the students.
Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org
