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If you’re a Black student in the Garden State, you will likely not have the same access to mental health resources as your white counterparts. In fact, their access has increased over the past decade, while yours has declined.
That is the conclusion of a report from New Jersey Policy Perspective. Looking at the period from 2008 to 2020, it found that the ratio of mental health staff for Black students declined from 10.3 per 1,000 students to 8.5. The ratio for white students increased from 7.4 to 8.8 per 1,000 students.
There were also steep declines among school counselors for Black students, from 4 counselors per 1,000 students in 2008 to 2.6 per 1,000 students by 2020. That’s below the state average, below their white peers, and well below the recommended ratio from the American School Counselor Association of 4 per 1,000 students.
“There are significant differences in the trends for access to mental health supports between students of color and white students over the last decade and a half or so,” said Dr. Mark Weber, NJPP’s special analyst for education policy and the report’s author. He adds that there has also been a decrease in mental health access for Latino students. “It’s these trends that we really highlight and that I frankly find very troubling.”
The report findings are not a surprise to Dr. Stephanie Silvera, a public health professor at Montclair State University who studies health disparities.
“We know that Black and brown communities, particularly school communities, tend to be under-resourced in a lot of different ways,” she said. “What we’re looking at is really a time where the need for mental health resources in these communities has increased dramatically, but the help has decreased dramatically … it’s a disturbing equation, if you think about it.”
Weber said that the trends are “clearly” related to funding, adding that it is incumbent on the state to take another look at the school funding formula and ask themselves if it is set up to give schools the resources needed to ensure students are successful.
“When a district doesn’t have adequate funding, it is unable to provide the supports, not just mental health supports, but all kinds of staff that are necessary for instruction and for student support,” he said, pointing to past NJPP reports that focused on school funding disparities between Black and white students. “This is yet another manifestation of those differences.”
Silvera said that the issue of who has access to mental health is a microcosm of a bigger issue that remains before a judge, the de facto segregation of schools across the state.
“What we are seeing … is differential access to resources that are patterned racially,” she said. “That’s not accidental. It is based on a long history of residential segregation. And we live in a country where our educational experience is tied to our residents.”
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