Public listening moments during School Committee meetings can be awkward: Committee members don’t respond directly to commenters, who are only allowed two minutes to speak. But Atlanta Public Schools officials were listening. After Iman spoke, officials met with her and several other students and agreed to pilot a student-led mental health committee for the 2024-25 school year.
APS’ pilot program will involve five schools, which have yet to be named. Each participating school will select a student and staff liaison to serve on the board. The goal is to hold one district-wide event per semester on mental health. Each event will be student-led, with staff on hand to respond to any mental health emergencies. If APS is happy with the pilot program, it hopes to expand it.
Studies have shown that rates of anxiety and depression increased among young people after the first wave of COVID-19. Federal data shows that suicide rates among young people also increased during the same period. Half of the caregivers who died from COVID-19 in the United States lived in six states, including Georgia.
Credit: Contributor
Credit: Contributor
Cook said his mental state deteriorated shortly after his father died two years ago.
“I had just started high school and I was struggling with my mental health,” he said. “I literally got no help from the school. I tried to get help but I got no help.”
Cook volunteers with Our Turn, a national organization that mobilizes students to advocate for themselves, and mental health is one of its policy priorities. She expressed concerns about the lack of mental health resources in schools to the group.
Evan Malbrough, student organizer for Our Turn’s Atlanta chapter, worked with Cook before the school board meeting to develop the idea for a student-led mental health committee.
“A lot of that (plan) came out of a blog post he posted on Our Turn,” Malbrough said.
Malbrough said that to his knowledge, APS would be the first school district in the nation to implement such a program.
Ann Cornell is chief clinical officer for CHRIS 180 in Atlanta, which partners with APS schools and other school districts in Georgia to provide mental health and counseling services. Cornell said creating a student-led committee is an important step in helping students identify their own needs.
“It’s a recognition, number one, that mental health is really important,” she said, “and number two, that, ‘We’re struggling and we want to make sure mental health services are really accessible and available in a timely way,’ and they’re speaking up.”
Cook said he wants the district to listen to students and respond to their needs, such as increasing the number of counselors.
“Students my age have issues with depression, anxiety, things like that,” he said in an interview. “I think that there are therapists, especially at my school, but if you think about it, there are about 1,000 students at my school, so there’s only so many students a therapist can see per week.”
Some medical experts believe each school should have at least one psychologist for every 500 students. In 2022, a report by a group of mental health organizations found that Georgia’s public school ratio was one psychologist for every 6,390 students.
Cornell University thinks a student-led committee is a good idea because it gives students a forum to share experiences and find answers.
“Different schools and cultures have different solutions that work, and we need to embrace all of that,” she said. “This isn’t a one-size-fits-all, cookie-cutter approach. We really need to be individualistic and make our schools as safe as possible.”
Neev Seedani, a former Gwinnett College student and Our Turn fellow who helped the APS student committee develop the plan, said participation shouldn’t be limited to just “A” students.
“We’re not just looking for bright students,” he says. “We’re not looking for students who maintain a 4.0 GPA – we can have some of those, of course. The point is, we’re looking for students who are genuinely interested in these issues. They don’t have to come from a special background to participate.”
