Last week, the National Center for Education Statistics released key data that provides a glimpse of just how much the school climate and safety landscape shifted — or didn't — following the COVID-19 pandemic.
"These critically important data reveal some of the challenges public schools face in keeping the focus on teaching and learning,” said NCES Commissioner Peggy G. Carr in a statement on the findings.
The U.S. Department of Education agency focused its report on three school years: before the pandemic in 2017-18, the first pandemic year of 2019-20, and the most recent collection in 2021-22.
The findings, based on a nationally representative survey of about 4,800 public elementary and secondary schools, show a decrease from 2019-20 to 2021-22 in the percentage of schools reporting SROs on school grounds and offering mental health treatment to students, while the percentage of schools saying they increased social-emotional support in response to COVID-19 soared.
Carr and other NCES experts didn't offer explanations behind some changes, or lack thereof, in the data.
However, they came after two seismic events — the pandemic and the murder of George Floyd — brought about shifts in the public education landscape that educators and policy experts thought would become a major turning point for school climate and safety in the K-12 sector. Observers noted these shifts could have impacted NCES' findings.
In the wake of the pandemic, educators, policymakers and politicians pushed for greater mental health support in schools. As hundreds of billions in federal aid poured into the K-12 system, many schools nationwide reported mobilizing to improve access to mental health services.
In the meantime, a wave of anti-police brutality protests washed over America's streets. The 2020 murder of George Floyd and police-involved shootings of other Black Americans had rekindled a civil rights movement that came with implications for Black and brown students, the police in their schools, and their districts' relationships with local law enforcement.
SROs on school grounds
A year-plus later, the new NCES data found, somewhat fewer schools posted school resource officers on their grounds.
In 2021-22, 44% of schools had school resource officers present on campus at least once a week, down from 49% of schools in 2019-20 but similar to the pre-pandemic levels of 45% in 2017-18.
This fluctuation coincided with changes in SRO roles and policies.
In fact, the decrease in SRO levels didn't come as a surprise to Mo Canady, executive director of the National Association of School Resource Officers.
When school buildings closed during the pandemic, many law enforcement agencies moved SROs to community patrol, said Canady in an email. "As schools reopened, early retirements and recruiting issues made it difficult for some of those agencies to send officers back into schools."
Canady said he suspects the latest NCES statistics also likely reflect some school districts' decisions to discontinue SRO programs after Floyd's murder at the hands of police.
Many districts severed relationships with local law enforcement in 2020 in what Canady at the time called a "knee-jerk reaction."
Those decisions aimed to make school environments more supportive for Black students, who have been found to be suspended, expelled and arrested at higher rates in the presence of SROs. Black students also experienced mental health challenges and race-related stressors more acutely than other races during the pandemic years.
"But as school violence and gun possession on campuses increased significantly after the pandemic, many of those districts reinstated their SRO programs, and many communities began new programs," Canady said last week.
For example, Denver Public Schools, which ended its contract with local police shortly after Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis, signed a new agreement in 2023 to bring SROs back.
Mental health availability
When it comes to mental health services, NCES found a decrease in diagnostic mental health assessments and also mental health treatment from 2019-20 to 2021-22. This came despite a push in the education sector to increase student supports during and after the outbreak of COVID-19.
In 2021-22, just 49% of schools surveyed by NCES said they offered diagnostic mental health assessments, down from 55% of schools in 2019-20, the school year when the pandemic hit, and 51% prior to the pandemic in 2017-18.
Schools offering mental health services to students also dropped, from 42% in 2019-20 to 38% in 2021-22, according to the NCES findings. That brought the percentage back to the pre-pandemic level of 38% in 2017-18.
However, according to NCES data, 90% of public schools said they increased SEL support for students in response to the coronavirus pandemic in 2021-22.
For the 2021-22 academic year, schools cited some of the same limitations to providing mental health support as in previous years, with inadequate access to licensed mental health professionals and insufficient funds topping the list.
The funding barrier lessened a bit after more federal emergency pandemic dollars opened up for schools. Whereas 54% of survey respondents cited inadequate funding as a barrier to providing mental health supports in 2019-20, that share dropped to 39% in 2021-22.
The percentage of schools citing inadequate access to mental health professionals, however, remained relatively level.
Chris Chapman, who oversees NCES' Sample Surveys Division, said the data didn't suggest any new reasons as to why a lower percentage of schools offered mental health services.
"There may be other issues that are going on that are outside of the collection — the localities around the schools might be doing more sort of work with the adolescent community outside of the schools," Chapman said. "We don't really know why it is that there might have been a decline."
However, school psychologist and counselor experts point to multiple factors that might be at play.
Despite improved ratios of school counselors to students in 2021-22, schools remain understaffed in this area, said Jill Cook, executive director of the American School Counselor Association. "The biggest issue is demand. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated an already mounting mental health crisis among our nation’s kids."
It's also possible that new local policies requiring parents to actively opt in for their children for universal mental health screenings or student wellness activities may have led to fewer students taking part or being identified as needing additional support, said Kelly Vaillancourt Strobach, director of policy and advocacy at the National Association of School Psychologists.
"This can make it challenging to identify and intervene early," said Vaillancourt Strobach. "We know that the need for these services continues to rise, but with dire workforce shortages, we also know that more services need to be offered in order to meet the need among our nation's youth."
It’s also possible that schools have established partnerships with community providers to lighten the caseload in schools that are already stretched thin from staff shortages, Vaillancourt Strobach said.
Crime levels
Meanwhile, as both SROs on school grounds and mental health services decreased, schools did not experience significant drops in violent and nonviolent crimes.
Nationwide, 67% of all public schools reported at least one violent incident in 2021-22, and 59% reported at least one nonviolent incident. Middle and high schools reported at least one incident of violent or nonviolent crime at rates higher than the national average rates of all surveyed public schools reporting at least one such incident.
Public schools reporting at least one incident of violent crime remained fairly stable, at 67% in 2021-22, compared to 70% in 2019-20 and 71% prior to the pandemic in 2017-18.
"For nonviolent crimes, there was some change over time," said NCES's Chapman. Public schools reporting at least one nonviolent incident decreased from 65% in 2017-18 to 62% in 2019-20 and then 59% in 2021-22.
Given other reports of increased school violence and gun possession on school grounds following the pandemic, however, NASRO's Canady said he expects schools to bring more SROs on campus — and reverse the decline NCES noted.
"It won’t surprise me, therefore, to see an increase in SRO use in a future NCES report," said Canady.
At the same time, although schools reported a decline in some mental health supports, schools have actually increased their social-emotional learning efforts, Cook emphasized.
Cook said that critical school counseling interventions "are happening in schools today, but we need more school counselors and more access.”
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