The Mayor and City Council Upend Teen Mental Health Spending, Part One
This is a Seattle teen mental health/teen gun violence story that is still in motion and a bit dizzying at that. Plus, there is limited knowledge about what actually works for teen violence (short of a gun ban and even then, there's millions of guns in this country.)
In a nutshell:
After the November 2022 shooting and murder of an Ingraham High School student in the school, the City of Seattle pledged $20M to help SPS with with teen mental health issues. The Seattle Student Union had pushed hard for that amount and it was delightful to see them score this win for their fellow students.
But the bill - so to speak - has come due and now the Mayor and the City Council have scaled way back. I hasten to say there is something of a good reason on the Mayor's part but honestly, it feels like a bait-and-switch and some on the Council just openly don't appear to care.
The Mayor had said he wanted to cut the amount in half. He didn't say
where the other $10M will go (the City, like the district, has a budget
shortfall).
Councilmember Tammy Morales had proposed an amendment - both in committee and before the full council - to keep the $20M amount for teen mental health. Yesterday, it failed on a 5-4 vote.
The amount they did come to yesterday is $12.5M. City Council meeting Councilperson Dan Strauss added an amendment to the total - I believe for "teen violence" - to get to that total of $12.5M.
Thanks to reporters like Erica Barnett, we know some of what was said yesterday and frankly, pretty shocking and ballsy words from council members who may run again. Good luck with that.
I have sent emails to the Mayor and all those CMs who voted no. I have heard back from the Mayor's office with helpful info (although not complete answers) and only heard acknowledgment of my email from Councilperson Maritza Rivera).
End of nutshell
There have been three media stories on this issue - on Publicola, a story on KUOW and today, a story in the Times. All bold is mine.
Publicola
(CM Tammy) Morales wanted to release all of the the approximately $20 million the city will collect in payroll taxes for youth mental health programs this year, instead of waiting until next year or later to spend all the money. Morales said her amendment would “maintain the commitment” the council made to students, who organized in response to a shooting at Ingraham High School in 2022, during last year’s budget.
This is the Mayor's point and a genuine concern:
Obviously, it takes time to figure out how to spend a sudden windfall and, having done that, to get the money out the door.
A larger concern, for those who want to see the full $20 million go to mental health services for young people in the future, is that once the funding is rolled back into the larger JumpStart fund this year (and used, as it inevitably will be, to help patch the city’s ongoing budget hole), it will be harder to claw back for its intended purpose in future years.
This:
The mayor’s office, which recently released its plan to spend $10 million of the money collected this year, has said that because the tax was only proposed, and approved, at the end of last year’s budget process, the city needs more time to come up with a plan to allocate all the funds in the future.
Channeling this argument, Councilmember Bob Kettle called Morales’ comments “an injustice to the executive,” then went further, arguing that the proposal to fund student programs “came out of nowhere” and emerged “out of the blue” last year.
Uh, well it "came out of the blue" because former CM Kashama Sawant listened to students and parents in Seattle Schools who were upset and worried when the Ingraham High shooting took place.
Also to note, this is a new Council from the one who approved these dollars in the first place. My impression from afar, after reading local media, is that it is a more conservative council.
KUOW
“The mayor is refusing to act swiftly to implement this money,” Natalya McConnell, a former Franklin High School student and student activist, said in June.
City council members had approved $20 million last November for student mental health services, a year after the fatal shooting of an Ingraham High School student. Students filled council chambers and asked for money for school therapists and counselors.
Council agreed, allocating tax money from Amazon and other large businesses, otherwise known as the JumpStart payroll expense tax.
Again, the Mayor says everything is not ready for that kind of spending in one year to start.
This doesn’t make sense to Natalya McConnell, who argued that Mayor Bruce Harrell could ensure that there are enough mental health counselors for every school. McConnell said that Franklin, her alma mater, had just one therapist and four school counselors for 1,300 students.
“School shootings are going to keep happening as long as the mayor and elected officials continue to neglect students,” McConnell said.
The vote in committee:
In a tied vote, the amendment failed. Councilmembers Tammy Morales, Rob Saka, Joy Hollingsworth, and Tanya Woo voted in favor. Councilmembers Bob Kettle, Cathy Moore, Sara Nelson, and Maritza Rivera -- a mother who during her campaign was vocal about her two teenagers being inside Ingraham High School during a school shooting -- voted no.
Councilmember Dan Strauss abstained.
The entire Council vote was 5-4 with Strauss joining the others.Seattle Times
His ( the Mayor's) proposal included $2.4 million for initial telehealth services and $2 million toward violence prevention. The dollars would additionally go toward scaling up existing programs.
“These tax dollars must be spent responsibly with coordination, equity, and accountability in mind as well as creating measurable outcomes for success,” spokesperson Callie Craighead said in an email.
Morales points out:
“We have fully funded SPD and now we must fully fund this mental health work,” she said.
She said she understood that there are shortages of certain mental health workers. “Nevertheless, what we don’t have a shortage of in Seattle is people and organizations, including our own city departments, who are committed to doing the work to enrich the lives of young people in our schools,” she said.
Feedback
Times
Councilmember Maritza Rivera, who centered school safety in her campaign after her children were locked down in Ingraham High School at the time of the shooting, questioned the motives of the amendment. She doubted all $20 million could actually be spent and raised concerns about how much direction the previous council had provided to city departments when they set aside the money.
“I’m tired of people promising things to constituents and, most importantly, children, that we can’t deliver on,” she said Monday. “I want to make sure we can actually deliver on the promise that we make versus doing some performative action just to show that we care.”
“I was on these City Hall steps two years ago advocating with our youth asking the council to do something after the Ingraham shooting,” Phil Lewis, a pastor and volunteer in Seattle Public Schools, told the council Tuesday, urging them to release the full $20 million. “This money belongs to our youth.”
Publicola via Twitter - Comments made during/about full Council vote
Parent
EVERY parent I talk to in North Seattle is focused like a laser on the current mental health problems facing our kids. If you’re cutting $20m from kids mental health in Seattle you either aren’t running for reelection or you can’t read the room. Easiest campaign message ever.
CM Rivera
According to Councilmember Maritza Rivera, "Community"—the people who showed up to testify for mental health funding today—"doesn't understand the difference between a symbolic vote and an actual vote."
Wait, what? The Council takes votes to make themselves look concerned and action-oriented after a school shooting but she says that was just "symbolic?" Good to know.
CM Morales
"I can't in good conscience vote on this midyear supplemental bill," Morales says, noting that the council has approved huge bonuses for police, funding new jail beds for misdemeanors, and against mental health funding for for young people.
CM Rob Saka
Saka says he will support releasing the full $20 million for youth mental health care this year, but wants "no more commitments" after that.
Shades of past initiatives from the Gates Foundation wherein big dollars were spent trying to figure out what might help and then, when those dollars are still needed FOR those initiatives, the dollars go away.
Students
Also in Seattle chambers today: Tons of kids and people who work with young people who want the council to release the full $20 million in annual Jumpstart tax funding for youth mental health care that the council approved last year.
Uh, I hate to break it to the City Council members who voted no but this is a charged-up, wake-up year for voting that I suspect will see many more Gen Z voters. Making them madder is not a good idea.
I'm still in council chambers, where Rob Saka just said there was "no rational basis" for providing $20 million a year to student mental health programs. Just looked over and saw some of the kids here to support this investment making astonished WTF faces.
The council is trying very hard to make this issue about former council member Sawant, but the kids here aren't buying it. Now deputy mayor Tiffany Washington is accusing Tammy Morales of lying when she says the mayor wants to use the money to close the general fund deficit.
I am seeing some finger-pointing about "responsibilities";
Seattle Public Schools is a separate entity which receives most of its funding from the state, though Seattle City Hall occasionally steps in to help provide supplementary services separate from basic education.
Occasionally? They are funding a citywide Pre-K program that is largely centered in Seattle Schools. They are funding graduates of Seattle Schools to go to community college.
Education funding falls on the State of Washington, Craighead wrote, and the mayor will continue to advocate that the state increase their investments in student mental health services.
In his answer to me, the Mayor's office said:
While the City has made stopgap investments to support youth mental health in recent years – including after theIngraham shooting in the 2023-2024 biennial budget – behavioral health is the responsibility of the County and Public Health. This is a relatively new body of work for the City, and it will take time to build capacity.
You may recall that Board President Liza Rankin has repeatedly said that gun safety issues are really not part of the district's mission.
And yet here we are.
In Part Two, I will cover the Mayor's Office lengthy response to my queries. I do agree the scaling up is a huge issue and no one wants to see dollars wasted on programs that are flimsy.
I hope to hear from more CMs.
Again, still no messaging from the Superintendent on any safety plan for Seattle high schools.
Comments
After the primary returns last week, I think the political winds are already shifting back to the progressive Seattle we know. I think CM Woo will lose the general, and I think Sara Nelson will struggle to get re-elected next year. CMs who want to survive will need to find a way to adapt. I also doubt many of these CMs will run for re-election, putting them in a position to do whatever they want, unfortunately. I see echos of the School Board in this.
I also have very mixed feelings about whether this money is well spent. SPS doesn’t have the greatest track record of offering mental health supports, and I’m leery of the on-site “health care” that has been offered to my own high schooler (the topic of another post). I am very curious what the Mayors Office has to say about this and look forward to your next post.
Many Thanks
It's a reasonable argument that school services are the responsibility of the school district, and health services are the responsibility of the county, so further duplication of bureaucracy by having the city create parallel services is not actually smart. Seattle progressives tend to treat virtue signalling as an end in itself. It's like ancient Greeks who poured wine in the fire as an offering to the gods, except Seattle progressives do it with tax money.
Who will provide the mental health services? Who will receive them? How much will be spent on administration? How will it be sustainable? How will effectiveness be monitored? Advocates neither know nor care about any of that. Just throw $20 million on the fire.
Suggestible kids are being manipulated by fear and ideology into advocating for the class interests of their teachers and other helping professions, which is a pattern I see in the district. The very fact these kids uncritically believe that therapists will stop shootings should be a huge red flag that their expectations are already way outside of reality. But even for improving mental health, I doubt that the funding will do much good, even if it was the full 20 million. The public school curriculum and the ambient progressive politics of Seattle are absolutely toxic to a young persons mental health. From teaching lack of agency, to identity confusion, to rumination, to outright self-hatred (projected as race or ancestor hatred), to cynicism and lack of belief, to catastrophizing the future - every value we are teaching kids here in Seattle actively goes AGAINST mental health. Add on top of this active shooter drills, which don't improve safety but instill fear. Add on top of this social media, video game, porn and smart phone addiction.
You really want to improve teen mental health? Start with the phones.
2. Thinking that mental health services are going to stop the gang activity afflicting Garfield and other schools is magical thinking.
3. Here are some simple measures that would help child mental health:
a. In elementary school, allow kids to have long recesses where they learn to interact with each other and burn off energy. Allow them long lunches. Would you have good mental health with only 20 minutes for lunch?
b. Keep recess in middle school. Locking up active 11-13 year olds inside without exercise is numbing to the mind and body. Give high school kids some time to burn off energy too, like mid-day sports or club activities.
c. Bring back art and music to the schools. These are essential to life, like water. And bring back instruction in the trades and hands-on skills, like automotive and shop. Kids that don't excel academically need a place they can shine. And everyone can use a break from sitting.
d. Arrest and prosecute criminals and get rid of guns and gang activity in the schools and on the streets. This alone is a massive mental health burden. There should be severe consequences and major interventions for kids who bring weapons to school or post on social media about weapons.
d. Phones. No phones in elementary or middle school, eg at lunch. Kids need to learn to socialize with each other.
e. We need more counselors in the school, and it could have been an option to add more, to this existing infrastructure. Outside contractors, eg groups that claim to support teenage mental health - often they have other aims and can be poorly vetted.
My kid's mental health has been affected by the gun violence at Garfield, and she is afraid when she waits for the bus. These are normal responses to a threatening environment. Why is it her burden to somehow therapize herself into happiness in an environment that is dangerous, depressing and anxiety inducing?
It is incumbent on us as adults to create an environment conducive to mental health. That should be our number one priority.
“ You really want to improve teen mental health? Start with the phones.” I couldn’t help it but smile.
Why don’t YOU start with the phones you provide and pay monthly bills?!?!? Kids don't get free phones at school. Parents buy them.
But, for example, if Garfield HS were to say "everyone has to have a clear backpack," where is that announcement? Who is to provide this? School starts very soon.
Anonymous, I like much of what you wrote but you HAVE to give yourself a name. Any name or moniker.
I don't think you could ban phones but yes, they should be deposited somewhere in the morning and you get it back when you go home. Generations went to school and lived without them.
I also believe there should be a NO TOLERANCE policy for any kind of weapon at school (and I mean like a knife or gun) or any kind of gang activity.
To your point on recess, here's an interesting story from the AP
https://apnews.com/article/school-attendance-sick-day-chronic-absenteeism-270f6d07041760e90bf84d9f4108aa4d
"Then his principal did something nearly unheard of: She let students play organized sports during lunch — if they attended all their classes. In other words, she offered high schoolers recess.
“It gave me something to look forward to,” said Jean-Baptiste, 16. The following year, he cut his absences in half. Schoolwide, the share of chronically absent students declined from 35% in March 2023 to 23% in March 2024 — one of the steepest declines among Massachusetts high schools.
In Oakland, California, chronic absenteeism skyrocketed from 29% pre-pandemic to 53% in 2022-23 across district and charter schools. Officials asked students what would convince them to come to class.
Money, they replied, and a mentor.
A grant-funded program launched in spring 2023 paid 45 students $50 weekly for perfect attendance. Students also checked in daily with an assigned adult and completed weekly mental health assessments.
Research shared exclusively with AP found absenteeism and poor mental health are “interconnected,” said University of Southern California professor Morgan Polikoff.
Emotional symptoms among teen girls were especially linked with missing school."
I don't agree with the money (and it's not sustainable) but recess, yes.