New Mexico joins multi-state suit over slashed mental health funding. Here's why.
The grants were introduced in a 2022 bipartisan piece of legislation called the Safer Communities Act, passed on the heels of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, that claimed the lives of 19 children and two adults. In April, the education department announced it would be terminating those grants.
"It is one of our greatest responsibilities to protect the mental health and safety of our children," New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez said in a statement on Tuesday. "The Department's decision to abruptly eliminate this funding is not only reckless, but it also defies the law and threatens to dismantle programs that are saving lives."
The discontinuation of the grants occurred nearly a month after President Donald Trump signed an executive order in March to dismantle the Department of Education and as the administration worked toward cutting costs through the Department of Government Efficiency. The education department did not respond to a request for comment on why it chose to cut those grants.
The cuts could have major effects across the state. For instance, the Central Region Educational Cooperative, or CREC, has been operating off a five-year, $6.5 million federal grant to provide mental health services to seven rural school districts: Belen Consolidated Schools, Estancia Municipal School District, Jemez Valley Public Schools, Magdalena Municipal School District, Mountainair Public Schools, Quemado Independent Schools and Vaughn Municipal Schools.
"Removing these services means that students don't get the support ... their mental health is compromised. These are rural school districts, so there's no access to those services," said Velinda Pearson, CREC's school-based mental health program coordinator. "Working parents aren't going to drive their kiddo an hour or two hours away to get the service every week."
Pearson added that the team had just reached full staffing in September, but if funding isn't salvaged, she and the rest of her staff could be out of jobs by December.
"We are looking at other options. ... We'll try everything we can to continue the services," Pearson said.
She said the plan written into the grant was to bill Medicaid for services provided after five years. But on Tuesday, with the passage of the budget reconciliation package by the Senate, sweeping cuts to Medicaid were made, which could alter that plan.
Pearson met with the state's Public Education Department in June to discuss possibly filling the funding gap, but said that the department requested additional data. PED did not respond to a request for comment sent Monday, asking if it would help plug funding gaps.
"New Mexico is experiencing a significant mental health crisis with one of the highest rates of suicide in the U.S. The defunding of programs like ours is alarming and upsetting," Pearson said. "We need to stop playing politics off the backs and lives of our most vulnerable communities and all come together in this fight to stop people's pain and suffering."
The other states that joined the lawsuit are California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island, Wisconsin and Washington.
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