Highland Park High School students should be familiar with the Community Teen Center, a school-based mental health program that helps students transition from high school to adulthood. In the 2021-2022 school year, the Teen Center served 331 students in group counseling, 132 students in individual counseling, and reached 7,292 students in school events.
On September 29, 2022, the New Jersey Department of Children and Families (DCF) and the Department of Education (DOE) informed 62 public school districts, including Highland Park, of a new plan to address student mental health. The DCF’s new New Jersey Statewide Student Support Services (NJ4S) network, at first expected to debut in the 2023-2024 school year, would replace the NJ School Based Youth Services Program (SBYSP) that has existed for over 30 years.
Rather than funding in-school mental health programs like Highland Park’s Teen Center, NJ4S shifts this care to fewer hubs that serve a larger region. Governor Phil Murphy said, “Implementing this new mental health support model will allow us to reach more students and offer the evidence-based resources and services they need.” Along with greater outreach, NJ DCF Assistant Commissioner for Family and Community Partnerships Sanford Starr expressed another goal of the program was to “develop this model into a cost-efficient, service-oriented benefit to students and their families throughout New Jersey.”
While NJ4S may be cheaper for the state government and reach a larger population than smaller operations, the proposed legislation faced immediate and forceful backlash from teachers, administrators, and mental health professionals. Superintendent Dr. Kristina Nicosia sent a letter on October 18, protesting NJ4S. She stated that it would have “disastrous effects” for these 62 districts and the 91 school-based mental health programs it would eliminate.
Ms. Elizabeth Asamoah, the Supervisor of Counseling, Health & Wellness in Highland Park Public Schools, expressed similar concerns when interviewed. She pointed out that school-based programs, including Highland Park’s center, provide students with convenient and immediate access to mental health services. NJ4S would create barriers between students and treatment, like the increased amount of time needed to travel to and from these hubs and the possibility of parental non-consent for these out-of-school excursions. Ms. Asamoah concluded, “I think it’s going to eliminate a whole lot of programming for students. Counseling, groups, family support, field trips, everything. It will just all be gone.” Her advice to worried students was, “Keep speaking up. Keep advocating because…it’s about us losing our jobs, but most importantly, it’s about the state taking something valuable from young people.”
Both private and public programs and the New Jersey community got involved in putting a stop to the state’s proposal. The Highland Park school district teamed up with Save Our Schools NJ and other organizations to testify against NJ4S. Additionally, a petition to save New Jersey’s SBYSP received over 10,700 signatures as of November 18, 2022. Highland Park Mayor Gayle Brill Mittler attended a meeting with NJ State Senator Patrick Diegnan on November 3 to discuss the state’s shift away from the SBYSP, which “meets a vital need.”
These efforts successfully demonstrated to politicians that student mental health programming is a priority for school districts. In early November, Governor Murphy’s administration postponed the defunding of SBYSP until 2024. Their new NJ4S plan remains, but now, one program will phase in before the removal of the other.
While it is good news as the Teen Center’s lifespan has been extended, it is still limited. Dr. Nicosia expressed doubts even with the update in New Jersey’s proposal and the many unanswered questions regarding it. “Our counselors work very hard to build trusting relationships through ongoing and onsite visits and it does not appear that this will be replicated in the proposed model,” Nicosia wrote in a November 18 email to Highland Park students and parents.
However, the progress made in only a few short months since the initial announcement of NJ4S demonstrates the power that schools, organizations, and communities have to protect their resources. As Ms. Asamoah said on the state removing school-based programs, “They’re taking it away from you guys, from students, from young people, and I think that having your voices heard, speaking up, standing up for what you believe in, is what I’m encouraging all our students to do at this school.”