School-Based Mental Health Services Grant Program

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION <CFR>34 CFR Chapter II</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket ID ED-2025-OESE-0152]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>School-Based Mental Health Services Grant Program</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, Department of Education. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed priorities, requirements, and definitions. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Department of Education (Department) proposes priorities, requirements, and definitions under the School-Based Mental Health Services Grant (SBMH) Program, Assistance Listing Number (ALN) 84.184H. The Department may use these priorities, requirements, and definitions for competitions in fiscal year (FY) 2025 and later years. The proposed priorities, requirements, and definitions are designed to better target activities designed to increase the number of credentialed school-based mental health services providers, specifically school psychologists, in high-need local educational agencies (LEAs) available to provide mental health services to students. These priorities, requirements, and definitions are intended to replace the Notice of Final Priorities, Requirements, and Definitions published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on October 4, 2022 (87 FR 60092). However, those priorities, requirements, and definitions remain in effect for previous grant competitions in which the notices inviting applications (NIAs) were published before the Department finalizes the proposed priorities, requirements, and definitions in this notice. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> We must receive your comments on or before August 18, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Comments must be submitted via the Federal eRulemaking Portal at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> See the <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> section for more details. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Dana Carr, U.S. Department of Education, 400 Maryland Avenue SW, Room 4B210, Washington, DC 20202. Telephone: (202) 987-0119. Email: <E T="03">oese.school.mental.health@ed.gov.</E> If you are deaf, hard of hearing, or have a speech disability and wish to access telecommunications relay services, please dial 7-1-1. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <E T="03">Invitation to Comment:</E> We invite you to submit comments regarding the proposed priorities, requirements, and definitions. Comments must be submitted via the Federal eRulemaking Portal at <E T="03">www.Regulations.gov.</E> However, if you require an accommodation or cannot otherwise submit your comments via <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> , please contact the program contact person listed under <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> . The Department will not accept comments submitted by fax or by email, or comments submitted after the comment period closes. To ensure the Department does not receive duplicate copies, please submit your comments only once. Additionally, please include the Docket ID at the top of your comments. <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal:</E> Go to <E T="03">www.Regulations.gov</E> to submit your comments electronically. Information on using <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> , including instructions for accessing agency documents, submitting comments, and viewing the docket, is available on the site under “FAQ.” Also included on <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> is a commenter checklist that addresses how to submit effective comments. In instances where individual submissions appear to be duplicates or near duplicates of comments prepared as part of a writing campaign, the Department may choose to post to <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> one representative sample comment along with the total comment count for that campaign. The Department will consider these comments along with all other comments received. In instances where individual submissions are bundled together (submitted as a single document or packaged together), the Department will post all of the substantive comments included in the submissions along with the total comment count for that document or package to <E T="03">Regulations.gov.</E> Comments containing personal threats will not be posted to <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> and may be referred to the appropriate authorities. During and after the comment period, you may inspect public comments about these proposed priorities, requirements, and definitions by accessing <E T="03">Regulations.gov.</E> To inspect comments in person, please contact the person listed under <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> . <E T="03">Privacy Note:</E> The Department's policy is generally to make all comments received from members of the public available for public viewing in their entirety on the Federal eRulemaking Portal at <E T="03">www.Regulations.gov.</E> Therefore, commenters should be careful to include in their comments only information that they wish to make publicly available. <E T="03">Assistance to Individuals With Disabilities in Reviewing the Rulemaking Record:</E> On request, we will provide an appropriate accommodation or auxiliary aid to an individual with a disability who needs assistance to review the comments or other documents in the public rulemaking record for the proposed priorities, requirements, and definitions. If you want to schedule an appointment for this type of accommodation or auxiliary aid, please contact the person listed under <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> . <E T="03">Purpose of Program:</E> The SBMH program provides competitive grants to State educational agencies (SEAS) (as defined in 20 U.S.C. 7801(30)), LEAs (as defined in 20 U.S.C. 7801(49), and consortia of LEAs to increase the number of <E T="03">credentialed</E>   <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> school-based mental health services providers, specifically school psychologists, delivering mental health services to students in <E T="03">high-need LEAs.</E> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  Terms with proposed definitions elsewhere in this notice are italicized the first time they are used. </FTNT> <E T="03">Assistance Listing Number:</E> 84.184H. <E T="03">Program Authority:</E> Section 4631(a)(1)(B) of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, as amended (ESEA) (20 U.S.C. 7281(a)(1)(B)). <E T="03">Background:</E> Our Nation's schools should be safe and secure settings where children can learn and grow to their full potential. However, over the last several years the decline of children and youth mental health has become a serious concern for our Nation. Given the importance of improving children and youth mental health, we are proposing four priorities to increase the number of available school psychologists. Evidence suggests that increasing the number of available school psychologists is related to enhanced mental or behavioral health services provision for students. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> Additionally, the estimated student to school psychologist ratio for the 2023-2024 school year was 1065:1. <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  Eklund, K., DeMarchena, S.L., Rossen, E., Izumi, J.T., Vaillancourt, K., & Rader Kelly, S. (2020). Examining the role of school psychologists as providers of mental and behavioral health services. <E T="03">Psychology in the Schools, 57,</E> 489-501. Available at: <E T="03">https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/pits.22323.</E> Accessed on June 10, 2025. </FTNT> Two of the proposed priorities are intended to focus on <E T="03">recruitment</E> and <E T="03">retention</E> incentives as a mechanism for increasing the number of credentialed school psychologists. A third priority would support <E T="03">respecialization</E> of individuals who hold degrees in related fields ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> special education, clinical psychology, community counseling) by helping them to more quickly obtain a State-license or State-certification as a school psychologist. The final priority is intended to address more directly the need for credentialed school psychologists who are available to deliver <E T="03">early intervention mental health services</E> and <E T="03">intensive mental health services</E> to students most in need of those services. To support effective implementation of the proposed priorities and administration of the program, and to maximize the benefit of these Federal funds, the Department proposes application and program requirements. The proposed application requirements are intended to ensure that the LEAs benefiting from the SBMH program are high-need LEAs, and to provide data on how many school psychologists the applicant anticipates hiring and retaining with grant funds in comparison to the number currently delivering services. The proposed program requirements limit the amount of grant funds that can be used for administrative costs, require that program funds be used to supplement, not supplant, non-Federal funds, prohibit the use of program funds for promoting or endorsing gender ideology, political activism, racial stereotyping, or hostile environments for students of particular races, and require applicants to initiate mental health services to students within a specific number of days. Additionally, given the importance of student safety and privacy, and of ensuring the protection of parental rights, the Department proposes requirements related to required credentialing to work in elementary or secondary schools, compliance with existing laws, obtaining parents' informed written consent for any mental-health assessment or service funded under this program, and telehealth services. Finally, to support the proposed priorities and requirements, the Department proposes elsewhere in this notice definitions for the following terms used in this program: “credentialed,” “ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 29k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━