Support Counselors and the Arts, Not Cops and Arrests

We, the undersigned California students and concerned adults, write to urge you to act to protect and support the mental health of California students. We submit this petition in support of the letter sent to you by the Youth Liberty Squad and endorsed by dozens of organizations on May 8th, 2020. We urge you to take action to ensure that California schools no longer treat their public school students like criminals and instead provide holistic supports that will help them recover from the pandemic and thrive, including investing more in school-based mental health, arts education, and other critical resources.

Youth leaders from more than 60 schools highlighted the following facts and recommendations in the May 8th letter. We demand a response and leadership to support students in this unprecedented time of crisis.

• California is 48th in the nation when it comes to access to school counselors.
• In a state with over 10,000 schools, in a time of pandemic, there are just 2,500 school nurses.
• There are nearly 400,000 California students in schools that lack a counselor but have police.
• There are twice as many school police than school social workers in California schools.
• There are more security guards in California schools than there are nurses.
• There are over fifty research-proven benefits of an arts education, including increased IQ, verbal skills, math skills, well-being, empathy, creativity, and self-esteem, all while decreasing stress and anxiety. Despite the evidence showing an arts education supports wellness and academic success, just 39% of California students are enrolled in arts courses, one of the lowest rates of enrollment in the nation.
• School police, by contrast, have been found only to contribute negatively to school environments and students. Nearly 90% of students in our statewide survey indicated they supported the permanent removal of police from schools and the reinvestment of the resources into counselors, arts, and other evidence-based student supports.

All of this is unacceptable, but particularly egregious in a post-crisis world.

• Prioritize school-based mental health in your governing and budgeting. California schools need thousands of additional counselors, nurses, social workers, and psychologists. The state needs to work with districts to ensure that funding is available for these essential school personnel.
• Further support holistic education and wellness by improving access to the arts, which has been shown to support student mental health and address trauma. In our survey, students reported music, dance, and media as three of the most supportive and healing activities during the pandemic. Arts education is also a civil right and is another area where California is significantly behind the rest of the country.
• Prioritize art access for the students with the least access. This includes students with disabilities, English Learners, incarcerated youth, Black students, and other vulnerable students. Black arts matter and we prioritized this theme in our first student art journal.
• Host a Student Wellness Town Hall to examine the underinvestment in student mental health supports, the inequalities in how those supports are provided, and the opportunities for leadership on these issues.
• Demonstrate stronger leadership in the movement to remove police from schools. This can begin with the Governor in partnership with State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, immediately seeking the input of grassroots, youth development organizations around the state as he makes appointments to the recently created Young People’s Task Force, to ensure full representation of those youth most affected by the school to prison pipeline and the presence of police in schools.
• Continue to address the digital divide and inequalities that have been exposed in the transition to distance learning. Consider the impact on students with disabilities, students experiencing homelessness, and the 1.1 million students who are English learners in the state. Invest in innovative supports and virtual tutoring. Provide schools with support to ensure that they are providing mental health and other critical resources remotely during the pandemic.
• Meet with representatives of the Youth Liberty Squad to discuss how to ensure that California schools devote resources to counselors, not cops, and arts, not arrests!