AFT’s Weingarten Responds to Trump’s Cutting of $1 Billion in School Mental Health Grants

WASHINGTON—AFT President Randi Weingarten issued the following statement after the Trump administration canceled $1 billion in critical mental health grants established by the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act in the wake of the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting. Thousands of critical psychologists, mental health workers and counselors were hired under the program.

“Really? Does this administration have to impose its ideological whims on everything? Even, apparently, on bipartisan grants passed after the murder of students and educators in a school shooting?

“This is a direct attack on the safety and well-being of America’s children—a repugnant act of moral vandalism that will endanger millions of lives. Parents, students and educators want safe and welcoming schools, but instead, gun violence remains, shockingly, the No. 1 killer of young people. In 2022, following the school shooting in Uvalde and after decades of inaction, Republicans and Democrats finally came together to do something about it.

“They may not have agreed on everything, but Congress secured $1 billion in bipartisan mental health grants to help kids better understand themselves and the world around them. The benefits were obvious. Now, with the stroke of a pen, that halting progress has been wiped away, even as the president and his allies insist that improving mental health is the only way to fix the gun violence epidemic.

“We don’t have to live this way; with enough willpower this scourge is entirely preventable. But if we’re going to erase some of the most commonsense responses to the most important education issue for parents, school shootings will only multiply and more innocent lives will be needlessly lost.”