The Department of Education will not renew $1 billion in mental health funding for schools, citing concerns about diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts in the contracts.
The funding came from a bipartisan gun violence bill signed by former President Biden that gave schools the money to hire mental health workers and counselors for students.
“These grants are intended to improve American students’ mental health by funding additional mental health professionals in schools and on campuses. Instead, under the deeply flawed priorities of the Biden Administration, grant recipients used the funding to implement race-based actions like recruiting quotas in ways that have nothing to do with mental health and could hurt the very students the grants are supposed to help,” said Madi Biedermann, deputy assistant secretary for communications at the Education Department.
“We owe it to American families to ensure that tax-payer dollars are supporting evidence-based practices that are truly focused on improving students’ mental health,” she added.
The news was first reported by Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist, on the social platform X, including excerpts of the grant documents, which list goals to hire a certain number of minority and diverse counselors for schools.
Rufo alleged the grants “were being used to advance left-wing racialism and discrimination. No more slush fund for activists under the guise of mental health.”
In a notice to members of Congress obtained by The Associated Press, the Department of Education said it would support the mental health of students in other ways.
“The Department plans to re-envision and re-compete its mental health program funds to more effectively support students’ behavioral health needs,” the notice said.
The move comes as the Education Department has cut millions in education research funding over alleged DEI efforts.
Earlier this month, the Supreme Court sided with the federal agency in allowing millions of dollars of grants to be blocked to teacher preparation programs that the Education Department said included certain DEI efforts.
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