Tennessee Wants To Place “Mental Health Liaisons” In Every School, With No Required Parental Consent For Referrals

Senator Janice Bowling calls the move “an egregious attack on parental authority and the personal Liberty we have concerning any ‘health care choice’.”

Image Credit: TDOE & TDMHSAS

The Tennessee Conservative [By Kelly M. Jackson]

Marie Williams, the Commissioner for the state of Tennessee’s Department of Mental Health & Substance Abuse, and Lizzette Reynolds Gonzales, the state’s newest and as previously reported, ultra-progressive Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) have recently released a report two years in the making. 

The report, produced by the University of Tennessee, is called “2023 Mapping the Landscape of Mental Health Services and Resources for K-12 Students in Tennessee.”

The report which seems to be the culmination of research that started in 2021 just after Governor Bill Lee proposed a Mental Health Trust Fund – a $250 million dollar proposal which according to the state website, will “assist K-12 families who are facing significant mental health issues in the wake of COVID-19. This proposal allocates $250 million in available funds to create strong mental health services for school-aged students through a system-wide, evidence-based approach.” 

The report discusses the information that was gathered from focus groups which included TDOE staff from all regions of the state, some staff from the Tennessee Department of Mental Health & Substance Abuse Services (TDMHSAS), and finally with “community-based providers” of mental health services, a review of what the report calls “publicly available” data, and surveys collected 69 school districts across 95 counties.

For context, there are 147 total school districts and more than 1,700 public schools across the state. Total participant count according to the report is 343 individuals serving in either the public schools or as a “community based” provider.

According to the report, the data they analyzed was broken down into basically two segments: assets and barriers.

They list their assets as organizations that exist within a community and the way those services are dispensed to those in the community.  According to the report, the problem seems to be that even if there are services available,the ability for the those in need of mental health supports (aka the students) are not being served because there is not an effective partnership in place to facilitate that level of care between those who provide the services and the place where the students are most of the time (schools). 

The report states, essentially, that in order to deliver the level of care needed to every single student K-12 in the entire state, the only answer would be an Obamacare mental health care waiver style system, where there is a “mental health liaison” assigned to every school, where any child who is determined to need more intensive mental healthcare can be referred by their school counselor or other school based staff.

These referrals will not require parental consent. For an idea of how this would look on a smaller scale, see this previous report that The Tennessee Conservative published on the program being implemented in Jefferson County. 

A major barrier also noted in the report is that of staff or rather a lack of it. The report states, “School-based staff emphasized a need for full-time mental health providers in each school instead of the current reality of mental health providers that are assigned to multiple schools…and unable to meet the needs of their schools. School counselors may not be able to address health concerns because they are used entirely to provide classroom curriculum rather than deliver a comprehensive program or are assigned non-counseling, administrative duties.” 

This leads to an important point that while Tennessee does have “school counselors” in schools and always has, however, the role of those professionals has always been to counsel students on their academic paths, and that is all. Even in districts that have a school psychologist or two serving the district, their role is to implement testing for students who are struggling academically and require an assessment to determine if there are issues that can be measured with a diagnostic tool – Not to provide mental health counseling. 

This foray into a wide-spread mental health treatment in a place where children spends most of their days, by people who ordinarily would not get access without parental consent, and without the protective presence of parents, is an entirely recent concept.

However, it is not wholly unlike the approach by the former Commissioner of TDOE Penny Schwinn who utilized what reports called at the time an “ambitious, three-pronged plan” which “contemplates academics but also includes using schoolhouses to get mental health, wellness and social services into rural communities and, with a third of Tennessee teachers at retirement age, training their replacements in working with the “whole child.”

In essence, this proposal by Governor Lee and the letter agencies that paid for the study, just seems to be the inevitable next step, in a three-year process, in the arguably progressive plan for the education system to impose itself in ways that have nothing to do actually educating students in the state of Tennessee. 

The Tennessee Conservative reached out to Senator Janice Bowling (R-D16-Tullahoma) regarding the proposal. When asked about the implications on privacy and parental rights, she called the move “an egregious attack on parental authority and the personal Liberty we have concerning any ‘health care choice’.”

Senator Bowling said, “My legislation last year requires the parental informed dated consent signature for all ‘health’ classes. It also requires parental consent to opt into any school health-based service. These optional ‘services’ are restricted to vision, hearing, weight and height measurements. No doubt we will still have to fight against these political agenda driven intrusions into the lives of our children. Declaring all children to be ‘mentally or emotionally ill’ is insidiously evil and decidedly governmental overreach.”

The Tennessee Conservative encourages readers to locate their legislator and express their concerns. You can find your legislator with this tool here.

About the Author: Kelly Jackson is a recent escapee from corporate America, and a California refugee to Tennessee. Christ follower, Wife and Mom of three amazing teenagers. She has a BA in Comm from Point Loma Nazarene University, and has a background in law enforcement and human resources. Since the summer of 2020, she has spent any and all free time in the trenches with local grassroots orgs, including Mom’s for Liberty Williamson County and Tennessee Stands as a core member.  Outspoken advocate for parents rights, medical freedom, and individual liberty. Kelly can be reached at kelly@tennesseeconservativenews.com.