SYRACUSE, N.Y. (NCC News) – The Covid-19 pandemic severely impacted students’ learning capabilities and mental health. The average U.S. public school student in grades 3-8 lost the equivalent of a half year of learning in math and a quarter of a year in reading, according to the Harvard School of Education. Also, the World Health Organization reported in 2022 that almost 25% of people experienced anxiety or depression after the pandemic.
At the beginning of 2024, New York State granted the Syracuse City School District $10 million to help with those issues.
“I would argue that both the learning loss piece and the mental health needs are equally needy,” Laura Kelley, Syracuse City School District Chief of Student Services, said. “We definitely want to regain some of the lost ground we had academically from the pandemic.”
The game plan to solve the needs, especially on the mental health side, is already being set.
“We have seen an uptick of mental health crisis in the area, and we wanted to look at a few different things. So, right now Onondaga County has two mobile crisis teams,” Kelley said. “The volume of the crisis’ across the county are pretty high, so we thought it might benefit Syracuse City School District to create our own internal mobile crisis team to think about some of the social work services, the mental health diagnosis to determine whether we can triage right on the spot or a more intense level of service.”
The additional services that the school district can now provide are especially important to the students as well.
“Each month the superintendent meets with his student cabinet and that is a common theme amongst the students,” Kelley added. “That either they themselves or friends of theirs are in need of some support and assistance.”
Kelley also stressed that these tough circumstances have hit the Syracuse City School district especially hard. One out of ten students are categorized as McKinney-Vento according to Kelley.
“When you think about these students who have had this interrupted schooling and and their families already may not have a stable housing situation or food insecurities. To have those additional struggles, it’s really a lot for any child to have to go through.”
This money from the state government acts as a testing tool for the Syracuse City School District to see what works and what may not.
“If we can prove this is an effective model then this is something we would consider investing additional support in the future,” Kelley said. “Having the opportunity to do it with the grant funding over the next two years is a huge win for us because we want to be able to respond to the need. It’s hard to know there is this need and not have a response for it.”
