EDUCATION POLICY - Promising Futures

Every student from preschool to high school should have access to a high-quality, trauma-informed, safe, supportive school environment that promotes their well-being. This is especially critical for children and young people who may have experienced violence, racism and other forms of trauma and oppression. Key strategies for helping schools address trauma, oppression and the impact of violence includes developing partnerships with local health centers and domestic violence programs in the community and changing the conditions and environments that create trauma. Trauma-informed schools help educators help all students succeed by providing needed supports, teaching life skills, and enhancing resiliency, offering healthy relationship education, validating their diverse racial and gender identities and ensuring that school environments are safe and free from discrimination and harassment. 

Social Emotional Learning (SEL) and Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) help children and youth build life skills and resiliency, and are effective at improving academic achievement and reducing behavior problems in schools. SEL benefits children and young people by helping them develop key life skills – self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision making. School serves as the primary place where students can learn and practice these life skills.  Social emotional learning should embed an equity framework, acknowledging that not all children are starting from the same place and have different life experiences based on their race, economic and immigration status and gender and sexual identities.  

Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) de-emphasize punishment and emphasize the adoption of school-wide systems that define, teach, and support positive student behaviors to create positive school environments. PBIS helps to build a healthy school climate and culture where all students feel safe and supported so that they can learn and sustain meaningful relationships with their peers and teachers. Safe and supportive school environments have been shown to positively impact academic, behavioral and mental health outcomes for students 

These approaches also serve as alternatives to harsh and ineffective punishment-based approaches that rely on suspension and expulsion and the overuse of police in schools to manage minor behavioral issues. Over-policing and these punitive approaches disproportionately harm BIPOC youth and students with disabilities – and perpetuate the “school to prison pipeline,” while making schools less safe and students less academically successful.  

In August of 2022, the Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services (CMCS) issued what’s known as an Informational Bulletin that reminded State Medicaid Agencies of the federal requirements for what’s called the Early and Periodic Screening, Diagnostic and Treatment (EPSDT) benefit. This benefit means that children who qualify for Medicaid can get many health services paid for by the federal government, yet many don’t get them, and it requires advocacy to ensure children receive what they’re entitled to. This Bulletin is a helpful tool for advocates because it also provides state Medicaid agencies, agencies administering the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), state behavioral health agencies, state developmental disability agencies, and other stakeholders with the relevant existing federal guidance and examples of the ways that Medicaid and CHIP funding as well as other government funding can be used in the provision of high-quality behavioral health services to children and youth.  

A second memo issued at the same time also provided similar guidance to help schools know how they can use new “flexibilities” and funding to help provide those services and receive reimbursement for them. By doing this they can significantly increase the number of students who get mental and behavioral health services for addressing trauma and create a stable funding source for the school district.