STAFF EDITORIAL: Administration should focus on mental health during the return to school

Most MCPS students haven’t set foot in a classroom for over a year, and for those who have, the experience is nowhere near what we once everyone, detrimentally affecting many students’ mental health. Despite progress with vaccine development and distribution, students’ feelings of loss, helplessness and loneliness during this historic period are valid. None of us were ready for the coronavirus to take away our cherished high school experiences, though this loss cannot compare to the grief of losing loved ones. The fact that we’ll eventually return to the school building doesn’t mean those emotions will immediately go away, or that we should pretend they have. Students’ emotional well-being is declining in a way we never saw coming; with the COVID-19 U.S. death toll past the ominous milestone of 500,000, we’ve become more and more desensitized to the news. In an October 2020 Gallup poll, one in four students stated that their depression had take a different amount of time for everyone; Whitman administrators need to acknowledge that and support us. As a school and as a community, Whitman should focus on ways to combat the shock of readjustment. Right now, MCPS requires that students attend weekly Social and Emotional Learning lessons, which promote mindfulness and teach students coping strategies for dealing with their emotions and mental health. Though implementing SEL is an important Whitman leadership needs to prioritize SEL, especially in the next few months, by putting more effort into making the lessons immediately applicable — tailoring lessons to the pandemic-related mental illness struggles that students currently face. Most Whitman students don’t even participate in the program. But if teachers were more enthusiastic in promoting SEL, students would feel more inclined to attend instead of viewing it as yet another optional activity on Zoom. Taking new measures, too, like allocating more discretionary funding for additional school psychologists and giving students more emotional support from school-provided professionals, individually or in small groups, can help us focus on our personal well-being and relationships in the midst of these uncertain circumstances.

We need trained professionals to aid us through the process of returning to school. The National Association of School Psychologists recommends, in a normal school year, one school psychologist for every 500 to 700 students, let alone in a virtual school year like this one. Right now, Whitman has only one school psychologist for 2,085 students, and most students have never even had the opportunity to speak to her. Psychologists would serve as an additional resource to the already existing MCPS mental health support programs, giving students a transition period.

This school year, MCPS also introduced a well-being support system for students and staff at every school. The system, called Be Well 365, offers dozens of programs for individual schools to implement. Whitman only provides three: counseling and the student ambassador program, both of which are optional, and the mandatory Sources of Strength suicide prevention class.

These programs are not enough. Although students can seek counseling over Zoom or apply to the ambassador program, which allows a select few students to become leaders at their school, much of our large student body is still left without proper support. The February Sources of Strength suicide prevention class, during which students learned about warning signs of depression and suicide, has historically been and remains the only mandatory lecture for students to learn more about mental health.

Other schools across the county offer more support to their students. A stark contrast to Whitman, Sherwood High School offers students resources like peer mediation, one-on-one student assistance and three programs Whitman offers.

While we couldn’t be more grateful for the efforts of teachers, counselors and administrators who have worked tirelessly this school year to help ease students’ worries during the pandemic, Whitman can and should do better.

The post-pandemic school environment dents, whether they’ve been at Whitman for almost four years or have never even entered the building.

Having access to mental health resources can only make our community stronger as we recover from the coronavirus pandemic. We shouldn’t let our new normal create an excuse to bury the emotions we’ve been experiencing. Whitman staff, let’s make our school a more welcoming place for every student in light of this past year.

graphic by EVA SOLA-SOLE