Republican state lawmakers want to repeal a law they passed five years ago that requires Arizona schools to teach students about mental health.
The proposal’s sponsor, Rep. Lisa Fink, R-Glendale, said during a Feb. 10 House Education Committee hearing that parents — not schools — should take charge of students’ mental health education.
Instead of focusing on teaching students about mental health, Fink said that schools should help students improve their mental health by focusing on physical health instruction about exercise, nutrition and proper sleep.
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Fink’s House Bill 2093 would also repeal a requirement to teach social-emotional learning in Arizona schools, which she claimed was a way to push critical race theory, ideas about systemic oppression and education about sexuality and gender.
Social-emotional learning has long been a part of classroom teaching, especially in elementary schools, even if it hasn’t always been called that. The general concept is to teach students how to identify and handle their emotions and to regulate their own behavior, as well as how to interact with their peers.
But social-emotional learning has become a target of the Republican culture wars, with conservatives attacking the concept as part of a “woke agenda” in public schools.
It wasn’t that long ago, in 2021, that Republicans in the state legislature voted to pass the legislation that Fink is now working to repeal. Only one Republican voted against the bill in the state Senate, and in the House of Representatives, it passed by a vote of 40-18, with bipartisan support.
The legislature, controlled by Republicans now as it was then, opted to require mental health education in schools as students struggled through the COVID-19 pandemic and advocates urged public schools to take action to help them.
Briana Ochoa, who was a college student at the time, said during a Feb. 2, 2021, Senate Education Committee hearing that she began struggling with her mental health in middle school.
“I had never heard anything about depression or anxiety,” she said. “So, I never understood why I was so scared to speak to people, or why I would feel this emptiness inside of me, and why I couldn’t bring myself to smile or to talk to those around me anymore.”
It was only when she joined the Your Life Matters club in high school that she understood she was experiencing mental illness, Ochoa said. The club teaches students to identify their feelings and how to reach out for help.
“It taught me that the way that I was feeling wasn’t weird or wrong, that it was completely normal, and that I wasn’t always going to be stuck in this hole that I felt,” she said.
Ochoa advocated for requiring mental health education in schools, saying that learning about it saved her life and the lives of others in the club.
During a debate on the House floor Wednesday, Fink said that in the years that schools have taught students about social-emotional learning and mental health, rates of depression, anxiety and suicide have risen among students, and academic performance has decreased.
But that doesn’t mean there is any correlation between the two. Studies show that chronic absenteeism, which spiked in Arizona and across the country after the pandemic, has contributed to worsened academic performance.
Experts say that contributing factors to mental health issues among students include increased screen time, especially time on social media, isolation, trauma, racism and homophobia.
Both Fink and Maricopa County School Superintendent Shelli Boggs claimed during a Feb. 10 Education Committee hearing that the mental health education requirement violated the state’s parental bill of rights, which gives parents the right to direct their child’s health care.
They both argued that teachers weren’t qualified and didn’t have time to teach students about mental health when they should focus on academic achievement instead.
“What started out helpful has been hijacked and politicized,” Boggs said.
But when Democratic Rep. Stephanie Simacek asked Fink how students who don’t have an engaged parent to teach them about or help them with their mental health would get help, Fink couldn’t provide a clear answer.
Brian Zuckerberg, the program manager for Kids in the Corner, an anti-suicide and mental health program, said during the committee meeting that Fink’s proposal would undoubtedly harm kids. Zuckerberg said that he grew up in an abusive home and would have benefited from learning about mental health at school.
“We go into schools every day and teachers thank us for talking to students about mental health,” he said.
Francine Sumner, who founded Kids in the Corner after her teenage son Zachary took his own life in 2017, also urged lawmakers not to support Fink’s proposal.
“No child should ever feel so alone that death feels like the only option,” Sumner said.
Now Sumner’s organization teaches mental health education in Arizona schools, with only a 1.5% opt-out rate from parents, she said.
The organization works to teach kids about mental health, as well as to help them talk to their parents and get help if they’re struggling, especially since many students say they don’t want to burden their parents with their problems. Sumner said that she believes the mental health education requirement has saved lives.
Democratic lawmakers shared lengthy and impassioned remarks on the House floor Wednesday, urging lawmakers not to support House Bill 2093.
Rep. Quantá Crews, D-Phoenix, said she learned about mental health issues in middle school health classes, and that knowledge helped her and a classmate realize years later in high school that Crews was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after being sexually assaulted.
Crews said that she tried to move on and act like nothing was happening, but a friend noticed she was acting out of character, crying all the time and blowing up at people. Crews said that her friend helped her speak to a counselor and get the help she needed.
Phoenix Republican Rep. Matt Gress said on Feb. 10 that today’s social-emotional learning was not the same as what older generations learned from the PBS show “Mr Rogers’ Neighborhood.”
“That’s social emotional learning as it should have been, where you teach people how to be kind to one another, and that you can regulate your emotions when you’re mad or sad,” Gress said. “But this isn’t ‘Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood’ anymore. This is not telling and teaching kids how to be kind. They’re teaching kids how to think, and shaping their worldview in a way that is self destructive.”
Fred Rogers, the star of the longrunning and beloved PBS show, was no stranger to advocating for social change. In 1969, he famously invited the Black man who played a police officer on his show to cool his feet in the same kiddie pool Rogers, and to share a towel to dry his feet afterward. At a time when many pools were still segregated, this act was a clear statement about racism and prejudice in the U.S.
“Schools should not be in the business of mental health care, they should be in the business of teaching,” Gress said.
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