Dallas principal Ruby Ramirez knew trouble was brewing when the school counselor came to her office looking grim.

A once gregarious, curious student was disappearing before their eyes, the counselor told her, rarely speaking in class, ignoring his work and classmates, and combing his hair forward over his eyes as if to block out the world.

The bright middle schooler had been struggling with remote learning, and Dallas Independent School District’s School for the Talented and Gifted was able to convince his parents to send him to school in-person, hoping that would reignite his love of learning.

It didn’t.

The counselor also had an ominous message for Ramierez:

“He’s not the only one.”

That’s when Ramirez knew for sure: the second pandemic, the pervasive mental health challenges facing youth around the world, was at her doorstep. If her school didn’t get out ahead of it, they could lose their students. With the looming crisis, Ramierez decided it was time to revisit her training.

“We have work to do,” Ramirez said. Once she saw students’ languishment extending beyond remote learning, enduring into the school building, she knew deeper challenges awaited. “We had gotten to a point where the desire was fading.”

It was time to prepare her staff for the challenges to come.

Mental health professionals and doctors around the globe are warning that after more than a year of stress, isolation, grief, and fear, students will not simply spring back into school. Young people everywhere from to to the are reporting more anxiety, depression, and trauma symptoms.

In addition to withdrawal, increased moodiness and volatility, parents are reporting terrifying instances of self-harm, or young children expressing thoughts of suicide, which have led to a nationwide for children under 18.

The CDC reported that between April and October 2020, the proportion of emergency department visits for kids ages 5 to 11 was up 24% from the same period in 2019, the proportion of visits for 12–17 year-olds increased by 31%. Experts say the stressors of the pandemic have added to the already mounting crisis of anxiety-related disorders in , some as young as eight years old.

As a result, demand for the Mental Health First Aid courses is soaring among teachers, counselors, coaches — people who interact with kids, said Judith Allen, a certified Mental Health First Aid instructor.

Through her , Allen trained 500 adults this spring, and the nonprofit will triple instructors to meet demand this fall. The online courses made it possible for people from across the country to participate.

During her youth-oriented course — roughly seven to eight hours between the pre-work online, class session, and assessment — adult participants started by learning a foundational truth: administering first aid is not about the adult saving the day.

“You’re not a superhero, there’s no cape,” Allen said. In a session in early April, she showed the online group several scenarios where an adult might be tempted to come up with the saving insight or even offer an arm-chair diagnosis. The students in the scenarios expressing loneliness, hopelessness, and lack of motivation mirrored what parents and teachers are describing seeing more of in the wake of the pandemic.

Seeing a kid in crisis elicits a strong desire to save the day, Allen said, but rather than focusing on saying the right words to inspire, motivate, or even break through to a teen going through a mental health challenge, the training encouraged adults to be observant and open, listening to students without judgement or quick answers.

“(CPR training) does not qualify you to crack open their chest and massage their heart,” Allen told our class. She compared this to Mental Health First Aid: offering advice, diagnosis, or counseling should be left to professionals. “No one is leaving here with a doctorate in psychology or psychiatry.”

That didn’t mean walking away without new knowledge. Merely spotting trouble among adolescents can feel like something that requires just those degrees sometimes, and that’s where the course does offer tools most adults don’t already have, like looking for warning signs, indicators that something was amiss with the teen.

As students flood back into classrooms, experts are warning that the anxiety and mental health challenges could increase. Knowing the warning signs will be key to catching challenges early, getting the young person professional help, and possibly saving a life.

The course explained developmentally appropriate pulling away from family, changes in interests, and emotional expression and compared that to signs of trouble.

While most teens will pull away from family to some degree, pulling away from friends and mentors at the same time could be a sign of trouble.

Changing interests from childhood hobbies to more socially or ambitiously motivated interests is also typical. Losing interest and motivation in every area is a warning sign.

Watching the videos, it’s clear that a mental health challenge would be hard to spot from one interaction with a teenager. It was also understandable why signs were so much harder to spot over zoom: the intensity, frequency, duration of the warning sign is what Mental Health First Aid responders should note. While teachers might notice withdrawal or lack of motivation over Zoom, it was hard to tell where else that might be showing up. As Ramirez had noted, remote learning was tough for everyone, and it was hard to tell whether a child was experiencing Zoom fatigue or something more pernicious.

Teachers, coaches, and youth leaders who see the kids regularly and in person are ideally situated to catch the red flags when kids go back to school. Seeing students day in and day out will allow them to track the moods and behaviors that might need to be addressed. A bad day is going to happen, but lots of worsening bad days that extend into bad weeks is a sign of a mental health challenge.

Much of the data presented in the course helped lay people understand the difference between a mental health challenge and mental illnesses or disorders. One in five young people must manage a longer term mental illness in order to thrive, but many more will face a mental health challenge—for instance, a season of depression, substance abuse, or anxiety— during adolescence.

Thriving with a mental illness or disorder is possible if it’s properly managed, Allen reiterated during the training, just like with chronic physical conditions.

The converse is true as well. Mental health challenges can occur in people with no underlying mental illness.

That’s what’s going to be so tricky for teachers, experts warn. The conditions are right for just about anyone to have a mental health challenge in the next year. At the same time, mental illness, especially those illnesses related to trauma, will likely show itself more readily.

In some ways, Ramirez has been in the eye of that hurricane for a long time, though. Nearly half of all mental illnesses present by age 14, the last year of middle school.

Children who grow up in poverty, like 88% of the students at the School for the Talented and Gifted, are at for mental disorders, toxic stress, and trauma. They’ve also been more heavily impacted by the pandemic.

“It’s scary,” Ramirez said, “Traumas have set in for our students, in their minds, in their thinking, that are really going to hinder them forever if we don’t address them.”

Ramirez first took a Mental Health First Aid course, along with her administrative team, in 2018 through Mental Health America of Greater Dallas. Students are taught how to look out for each other as well. This year, with the increased urgency of the pandemic, 10 more staff members took the class so that a quarter of the adults on the School for the Talented and Gifted campus will be certified in Mental Health First Aid. She’s hoping to get parents to enroll as well.

“It changed the way that I saw mental health,” Ramirez said, “It helped destigmatize, for me and my administrative staff, mental health.”

For mental health support related to COVID-19, call Texas’s 24/7 at 833-986-1919. You can also call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255 or text 741741 from anywhere in the country to text with a trained crisis counselor.

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Updated July 28

The D.C. Public Charter School Board voted Monday to approve KIPP DC’s virtual program proposal for grades K-12. It held off, however, on approving its request for creating an all-virtual campus in SY 2022-23, wanting to see how the virtual option works in the next school year. The two other charter networks that submitted all-virtual proposals did not get greenlighted: The board denied Howard University PCS’ request to continue its simulcasting model, determining the network had not shown its virtual program will result in improved performance or that there would be demand after the  pandemic ends. AppleTree withdrew its application.  

With school districts around the country increasingly adding virtual learning for the fall, three D.C. charter networks are seeking approval for their own all-virtual options, citing parent demand amid pandemic safety concerns.

, and are asking the D.C. Public Charter School Board, the city’s charter authorizer, to allow them to permanently offer all-virtual learning to a limited number of students.

“We know in-person is ideal,” said Andhra Lutz, KIPP DC’s managing director of secondary schools. But “we [also] have so much respect and so much love for our families. And our families have asked us for this.”

The plans range from launching all-new programming with virtual staff to sticking to last year’s learning models. Officials say there would be various safeguards — such as mentorship programs, attendance eligibility requirements and parent check-ins— to assure a high-quality experience rivaling in-person learning.

Projected capacity ranges from 20 students at AppleTree to nearly 300 students at KIPP DC, or about 4 percent of its student population. KIPP DC is also requesting approval to transition its virtual program into what would be the city’s second free, all-virtual public school in SY 2022-23.

A fourth school, , is requesting to permanently offer hybrid learning.

Without the PCSB’s approval, these schools could only offer all-virtual learning starting next year to students such as severe asthma, in line with from the Office of the State Superintendent of Education.

A virtual hearing and vote are scheduled for Monday.

“Khamal won’t even go to the grocery store with me,” KIPP DC mom KyShawn Route-Crowder said of her seventh grade son, who’s stressed about returning to school and wants to stay virtual. His father had a heart attack in 2016, is immunocompromised and can’t get a COVID vaccine.

Route-Crowder added that her son, who attends KIPP DC’s KEY Academy, has flourished in virtual learning without classroom distractions. “You have to know what type of student you have. And I know my child specifically, and I know he can excel online right now.”

While most students nationwide are expected to head back to the classroom full-time this fall, virtual learning is sticking around. A estimated 56 percent of schools will offer a remote learning option this fall, including in , , and Cleveland. Another report found nearly two-thirds of the country’s largest school systems will provide students an option to learn in stand-alone, remote academies.

Currently, D.C. Public Schools — which serves about 53 percent of the city’s public school kids — is only allowing those with a “documented medical condition” to learn virtually next year. , and have made similar calls.

This wouldn’t be the first time the PCSB considered changes that ran counter to local guidance, experts noted. It broadly a by the Deputy Mayor for Education cautioning against adding more charter high schools, for example. Any backlash to these plans, they surmised, would be less about regulations and more about concerns with program quality.

For most, distance learning last year was an inadequate substitute for in-person class. Slow Internet, digital literacy challenges, competing family obligations and distracting home environments upended many students’ progress — especially students of color from under-resourced neighborhoods. Numerous reports point to that districts now flush with recent federal stimulus aid are rushing to address.

For some families in D.C., though, online school has been working. In a sample parent survey Howard University PCS conducted last month, about 94 percent said it was “extremely” or “very” important that they at least had the option of all-virtual schooling this fall.

Ward 4 mom Keisha, whose eighth grade son attends Howard University PCS, hopes her son goes back to in-person class — just not next year. She’s holding off on vaccinating him — the vaccine for kids is still new, she said — and developments have her wary of him resuming his Metrobus commutes to school.

“Keeping him safe and healthy is my main priority,” she said. “I’m not rushing him back.”

A PCSB spokesperson said while the “goal is for schools to return to in-person learning as the primary mode of instruction,” the board is open to the conversation, wanting “to be responsive to the questions and concerns that we have heard from schools and students.”

KIPP DC: A new model in the making

Virtual programming this fall would look “vastly different” from last year, said Caitlin Maxwell, KIPP DC’s director of virtual learning programs.

On a typical day, kids would log on to in the morning, watch a seven-to 10-minute video for each of their class subjects and complete class work testing comprehension of the material.

KIPP DC’s “learning coordinators,” who are certified teachers, would then take about two hours to review students’ submissions, crafting their lesson plan for small group instruction that afternoon based on the concepts students struggled with most that morning.

During that two-hour period, students would have a break to eat lunch and take an “enrichment” class — like a foreign language or cooking — via a partnership with .

Spokesman Adam Rupe confirmed KIPP DC is poised to hire 20 to 25 all-virtual staff members using recent federal stimulus funding. If the all-virtual campus is approved, “we’d use our per-pupil dollars” to pay for the program long-term, he added.

So far, KIPP DC has identified 66 medically eligible students for this program. Broader polling of the school community informed the estimate that around 280 students in total may opt-in if able.

Not every student would be eligible to participate, though, Lutz clarified. A student would need to have had at least 90 percent daily attendance in remote learning last year. Staff would also review the student’s academic records and have a conversation with the parents “where we’re really upfront about what’s different [from last year],” she said.

If a family changed their mind after the school year began, KIPP DC would allow that student to return to in-person during one of its quarter breaks.

Lutz and Maxwell feel confident in students’ ability to succeed virtually; recently compiled data shows 76 percent of KIPP DC middle schoolers saw growth in math over the 2020-21 school year. (Â鶹ľ«Ć· asked for that same data pre-pandemic, but comparable data wasn’t available). They confirmed virtual learners would take “the same assessments” as students learning in-person.

While these students wouldn’t be working alongside their peers, Maxwell said KIPP DC’s virtual student clubs and monthly outdoor field trips would provide opportunities to socialize.

“That creates a sense of belonging for kids, and that’s often what they look forward to the most,” Maxwell said.

Howard University PCS: Sticking to what it knows

As of last week, there were about 18 Howard University PCS families with some 25 students interested in staying virtual, Principal Kathryn Procope said.

If approved, the school would stick to the model it’s used since late January: Simulcasting, where the teacher is physically in the classroom with some students and streaming the lesson live via Microsoft Teams for others tuning in virtually.

All classrooms are already equipped with — 360° camera, mic and speaker devices — for an immersive virtual experience, Procope said. Students at home could use the platform’s raised hand function to ask their teacher a question in the middle of the lesson.

No new staff hires would be needed under this model, Procope said. If a student decided to come back in-person during the school year, they wouldn’t need to change teachers.

Procope acknowledged the network overall saw “some slight dips in math and reading” performance last year, “but they weren’t significant.” Virtual students’ academic growth, she added, would be monitored with fidelity: The network’s learning platform, , is full of practice assignments to gauge students’ mastery of the content.And online quizzes and tests would only be released at specific times when a teacher is available to monitor the students on camera.

The school’s existing mentoring program is another safeguard to ensure students would have what they need to succeed, Procope said. Every student has an established relationship with a mentor who checks in at least weekly.

“It gives us an opportunity to know, ‘Hey, Mary’s family is experiencing homelessness, they may need X,'” she explained. “It allows us several touch points.”

“If we’ve learned anything from the pandemic,” Procope said, “it’s that we’re going to adjust and shift the way we educate them to make sure we reach them.”

The virtual public hearing and vote will be on Monday starting at 6:30 p.m. Information on registering to attend will be posted on www.dcpcsb.org.

Following Governor Murphy’s announcement that all New Jersey schools will return to full-time, in-person learning in the fall, Newark-based non-profit Project Ready conducted a statewide poll of 1,215 New Jerseyans to find out what parents think of the decision.

The poll found support for returning to full-time, in-person learning overall, with 86 percent of New Jerseyans and 88 percent of parents supporting the idea. However, the survey also found significant disparities between what Black and white residents think about the decision. Black residents were 5 times as likely as white respondents (20% to 4%) to say they are opposed to a full reopening in the fall.While 90% of white parents support the move, only 66% of Black parents do.

“While New Jersey has announced that schools will return to in-person learning full time in the fall, not all parents are comfortable with the idea yet,” said Project Ready Executive Director Shennell McCloud.

“There is a significant gap between Black and white residents’ support for this decision, which is no surprise given how hard the pandemic has hit Black communities. Some parents remain understandably concerned about the safety of their children, and it is incumbent upon schools to go the extra mile to address their concerns and build trust with parents as they plan for reopening in the fall.”

Concerns cited by parents included general ongoing concerns about safety, children not being vaccinated, not trusting children to wear masks and maintain distance, and the experience last year when cases dramatically increased during the fall.

Other key findings from the poll include (you can ):

Most parents think schools have reopened too slowly, but a racial and partisan gap exists:

• Overall, by 52% to 13%, parents think schools in NJ have reopened too slowly rather than too fast.
• Black parents are more evenly split (28% too slowly, 25% too fast) whereas white (57%-8%) and Hispanic parents (46%-23%) are much more likely to say schools have reopened too slowly.
• There is a very large partisan gap: 89% of Republicans say schools have reopened too slowly compared to 15% of Democrats, most of whom (52%) think reopening has gone at the right pace.

Parents mostly say in-person learning is going well

• Among parents whose children are back in school, 88% say it’s going well versus 11% who say it’s not going well.

More than 1 in 4 parents are choosing remote learning even with the option of in-person school

• Overall, 45% of parents say their child is learning in-person, 11% say they are remote because they don’t have the option for in-person, and 28% are choosing remote learning even though in-person school is available
• Among the 28% of parents choosing remote learning even though in-person learning is an option, the things that would make them more comfortable with returning their child to school in person are if all school staff are vaccinated (46%), if overall COVID cases go down further (41%), if their child is vaccinated (38%), and improved ventilation (34%).

Most parents are concerned about the impact on their child’s mental health

• Parents’ biggest concerns from the disruption to learning during the pandemic are their child’s mental health/emotional well-being (56%) and their child’s long-term success in school (44%). One in four (24%) are concerned about not completing the curriculum
• One in 6 parents (16%) are concerned about not being able to provide financially because of needing to be home during the school day, but Black parents (25%) are three times as likely as white parents (8%) to report this concern, along with 14% of Hispanic parents.

This article originally appeared at .