Student Walkout Targets Mental Health

Three hundred students poured out of New Haven high schools onto city buses and the streets to the New Haven Green to issue a cry for help: We need more counselors, not cops, to help us deal with exploding mental-health concerns.

Student leaders of the Citywide Youth Coalition (CWYC) organized the Thursday protest after several of its student members expressed two major concerns affecting them daily; 1. overly militarized schools due to metal detectors and school resource officers (SROs) and 2. not properly funded mental health resources like psychologists and social workers. 

The students began arriving on the Green Thursday at 9 a.m. for the rally and march, organized by CWYC in partnership with Black Lives Matter New Haven. 

The Thursday protest comes two weeks after Common Ground students banded together for a week of walk-outs, protest, and planned mass absences to speak out against the school’s plan to not renew several teacher contracts next school year. 

Over the past two years both educators and students have been dealing with national upticks in violence, teacher arrest, staff shortages, and learning gaps mirroring schoolhouse chaos nationwide amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Teachers have been calling on the district and state for fully funded schools with more mental-health support included.

Click here and here to read previous stories about other concerns raised this year by students. 

Students flooded the downtown streets chanting; 

“Whose streets? Our Streets!”

“What do we want? Police Free Schools!” 

“Hey hey, ho ho, SROs have got to go!”

A central theme was the school system’s decision to continue having school resource officers (SROs) while students have trouble getting any time with guidance counselors, who carry large caseloads in understaffed offices.

Schools Superintendent Iline Tracey contacted the Independent to note that NHPS does not pay for SROs (the NHPD does); and that the program began after a teacher was shot to death at Wilbur Cross High School.

Wilbur Cross sophmore Dave Cruz-Bustamante, who described himself as a socialist, scholar, and New Haven community organizer, took the megaphone outside of the Gateway Center Thursday when the march arrived there. He said that he and his peers are constantly going through ​“invisible hurricanes” of mental illness with no support during the school day. 

“It’s no secret that our schools are in severe disrepair, and we are falling apart with it,” he said. 

He urged fellow students to keep hope alive as they address mental health and overpolicing. He said he personally has dealt with depression and anxiety this school year due to dealing with long Covid, all while his school lacked in emotional support resources for students.

​“New Haven Public Schools put your money where your goddamn mouth is,” Cruz-Bustamante said.

The superintendent and district administrators left their Gateway Center offices Thursday to stand silently in the background as students made speeches, rang tambourines, and held signs reading, ​“Listen to students,” ​“Care not Cops” and ​“Police Free Schools.” 

“We’re not delinquents. We’re not criminals. We’re not stupid. We’re not untrustworthy. We’re not naive,” Cruz ‑Bustamante said. 

Students walked back from the Gateway Center to the Green with arms linked and fists held to the sky. 

“We will win,” Cruz-Bustamante said. ​“No longer will we roll over and let New Haven public schools preach about how much they care about their students as they allow police officers to patrol our schools instead of investing in professionals that actually know what they’re doing.”

Hillhouse junior Ma’Shai Roman, a student representative on the Board of Education, said she hopes the Thursday walk out will be a wake-up call for the district. Roman has spoken up during several board meetings this school year to ask that more mental health resources be offered in schools. 

“We’re always just told to push through it and to deal with it, because it’s life,” she said. 

Roman said a teacher recently told her that dealing with students’ mental health concerns are not the responsibility of the school. 

To join the protest, Roman brought an excuse note signed by her parent giving her permission to leave the school. Several other Hillhouse students also brought notes from home and walked to the protest. 

“We’re not troublemakers. We want nothing but the best for schools,” she added. 

Wilbur Cross seniors Anarea, Tatiana, and Jashzara joined the Thursday protest to call for less funding to school security and rmore mental health supports. They spoke on the​“Word on the Street” segment of WNHH FM’s​“LoveBabz LoveTalk” program.

The trio said they are often battling mental health alone or with their friends. 

“My senior year has been rough for me. Deadlines have been beating me up, and I’m not getting the resources or the help that I need to finish my school year off good,” Tatiana said. 

The students said they feel stuck. They feel like they aren’t being heard. 

Jashzara said she is often told her guidance counselor is too busy when she seeks an appointment. ​“We have more correctional staff than guidance counselors, and that’s a problem,” she said. 

“I’m literally screaming, ​‘Help! Help! Help me !” But you’re not doing anything,” Anarea added. 

The group said they want more psychiatrists in schools to conduct check-ups on students, whether scheduled or not. 

NHPS Response

Schools spokesperson Justin Harmon, reached after the protest, said that all students at all schools have access to social workers and psychologists. The professionals may be assigned to more than one school and work on a rotation, he said.

Harmon added that students were informed that once leaving the school they would not be allowed back in. Students who left Thursday morning were marked absent, he said; there is no plan for mass discipline.” 

“We respect the students’ right to protest, and we appreciate their concern for appropriate mental health services. The issue arises at a time when the district has substantially invested in school psychologists and social workers to address the stresses caused by the pandemic. We have accomplished this investment largely utilizing federal grant funding,” Harmon stated. ​“To sustain that investment after the grants conclude would require funding from the city and the state, who together provide most of our operating budget.

“The police are our partners in maintaining school safety, which must be a high priority in an urban school district. We do not have a large number of SROs — I believe the current number is six, in part due to vacancies, to cover 10 high schools. Even if it were desirable, disinvesting in SROs would yield nothing like the kind of savings the protest organizers are talking about.”