From: Marc Rothbart
Columbus
As everyone in the community contemplates the coming Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp. referendum, I would like to spend a few minutes talking about where 15% of the dollars generated will go. Fifteen percent of the referendum funds will go towards school safety, and most importantly, towards providing much needed focus on the mental health of our children.
The numbers are chilling as up to 20% of our students are experiencing depressive moods and coping skills pops out as the biggest need. The 2019 Indiana youth survey shows 15.4% of our students have actually planned suicide, 20.1% have contemplated it and 35.9% have felt sad or hopeless for more than two weeks. This is up from 2018 with the numbers being 10.8% planning, 17% contemplating and 31.5% feeling sad and hopeless for more than two weeks.
We have all watched as the above has also manifested itself in an increase in school violence. We can argue all day about the tools used to carry out the violence, but everyone must agree that to truly fix the problem, we must provide support for the youth in our communities.
Our schools have done an excellent job with the resources they have. Our school resource officer program is a huge success. They have focused on being accessible and someone the students seek out for support, not feared. They look for the lonely and they interact with those they feel are most at risk. If you envision armed guards waiting to end a standoff, you couldn’t be more wrong. They are an extension of the counseling that is done every day in our schools. The counseling and resource officer programs are effective, but we need more.
When you go to the ballot box this May, please know that a large chunk of your tax dollars will go toward making your community a safer place for our youth to develop, grow and become productive citizens.
