Hamilton County school board members voted to end a longstanding agreement allowing parents to consent to free, in-school mental health counseling for their children this month, but a recent state report — which showed that Hamilton County’s suicide rate rose more than anywhere else in the state, in part because of youth suicides — says young people need more support.
The school board learned of a student suicide a week before the board voted 6-5 to end the federally funded in-school therapy, school board member Ben Connor, D-North Shore, told the Chattanooga Times Free Press.
Republicans on the school board who voted to end the school system’s agreement with Centerstone — a Nashville-based nonprofit that provides school-based mental health services in Florida, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee — are standing by their decision, even as Democrats on the school board and Hamilton County Commission speak out against the vote, saying children are being put at risk.
“It is unconscionable to me that this is the direction that we’ve gone in Hamilton County right now,” Commissioner David Sharpe, D-Red Bank, said during Wednesday’s Hamilton County commission meeting. “A lot of the decisions that we make up here in local government are not life-or-death situations. This very well could be.”
School board members Joe Smith, R-Hixson; Ben Daugherty, R-Signal Mountain; Jodi Schaffer, R-East Brainerd; Steve Slater, R-Soddy Daisy; Larry Grohn, R-East Ridge; and Gary Kuehn, R-Ooltewah, voted to end the contract.