A growing number of schools are saying kids need a mental health evaluation before they can return to class after fights and other troubling behavior.
mother wasn’t surprised to get the call in October that her third grader had a meltdown at school — again.
A growing number of New Jersey schools are requiring students to get mental health evaluations — often referred to as “psychiatric clearances,” “risk assessments” or “clearance letters” — in order to return to class after discipline incidents, advocates say. Organizations for families with kids with disabilities say they’ve seen a spike in the number of parents looking for help after their children were barred from school until they got psychiatric clearances.
Advocates say it is often the same group of vulnerable students that many schools are requiring to get psychiatric clearances to return to school, even though getting the mental evaluations is sometimes difficult for families. “There are no parameters,” she added. “There’s no structure around what you can do, how long you can keep a kid out.”
But the guide does not say whether the school or the parents should arrange the psychiatric evaluation, who pays for it or how long students can be kept out of school as they wait for clearance letters. It also doesn’t say whether the student should get virtual schooling at home while they wait for their evaluation or whether parents can appeal.
Some student miss weeks or months of school while their families try to navigate the system, which includes aAdvocates worry about what happens when the students come from low-income families, non-English speaking families or families with other difficulties that make it difficult to secure a psychiatric evaluation and get their students cleared to return to school.
He would have to do at-home learning until he could get an appointment with the psychiatrist chosen by the district, she was told.But, arranging the appointment with the psychiatrist provided by the school took three weeks, she said. Then, getting the psychiatrist’s final written report to school district officials took another 11 days.
Some advocates call the methods “off-the-books” discipline and say they are a way for school districts to avoid federal laws that say all children, including those with disabilities, are entitled to an education. But many educators say understaffed and overburdened school officials are using whatever methods they can to keep students and teachers safe.
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