Mental health awareness training is essential for creating school environments where students feel supported and understood. When educators and staff are equipped to recognize early signs of mental health concerns, they are better able to respond appropriately and connect students to support. Providing consistent mental health awareness training helps reduce stigma, promotes early intervention, and strengthens school communities. These efforts support not only student well-being, but also academic success.

NO HB 38: Virginia Public Education has one job. Successfully educating scholars. Teachers are not to be Mental Health Providers. This 'Social Emotional Learning' programming is detrimental to Academic Achievement. Require ALL Administrators at a Director or Chief Level or Above, With Academic Responsibilities To Acquire Special Education Endorsements Instead. HB 38 as is may result in some unintended consequences of discrimination in classrooms.

Chair and Members of the Committee, On behalf of the NAACP State Conference Executive Committee, I urge your support for this legislation strengthening mental health awareness training for teachers and school personnel. Educators are often the first to observe signs of mental health challenges among students—particularly among youth disproportionately affected by trauma, instability, and unmet health needs. While current law requires training, it lacks guidance on what that training should include. This bill appropriately addresses that gap by requiring evidence-based instruction aligned with best practices developed by the American Psychological Association. By ensuring training addresses the needs of youth populations at higher risk, this legislation promotes early identification, appropriate response, and stronger connections to support—without stigma. The bill’s explicit prohibition against biased or discriminatory treatment is essential and aligns with the NAACP’s longstanding commitment to equity, fairness, and the protection of students’ civil rights. This is a responsible, preventive approach that supports both student well-being and educational success. We respectfully urge the Committee to advance this bill and affirm our shared responsibility to ensure safe, supportive learning environments for every child. Thank you for your consideration. Respectfully, Trish White-Boyd Executive Committee NAACP State Conference

HB38 will ensure that teachers are better prepared to address the mental health needs, specifically of their most vulnerable students. As a former special education teacher, I saw students with many of the risk factors outlined struggle to access the mental health support they needed. This is especially critical in Virginia, which ranked 32nd in youth mental health according to 2025 Mental Health America data. While we must continue to invest in additional staff with extensive mental health training, teachers remain on the front lines of this crisis and need up to date interventions supported by data, such as those outlined by the American Psychological Association. Overall, this bill is one step in the right direction to equip school staff to better support all students. -Liz Nigro, Voices for Virginia's Children HB96 is an essential investment, particularly at this moment with cuts to SNAP, rising grocery bills, and the discontinuation of the main survey tracking food security over time. Specifically, by providing school breakfast to all students, families in Virginia could save an average of $315 each school year. This equals roughly two months of diapers and one month’s electric bill for a single-family home. According to 2025 No Kid Hungry polling data, 97% of Virginians want to end child hunger, and we believe HB38 is a great first step. -Liz Nigro, Voices for Virginia's Children We support HB210, especially at this moment. According to No Kid Hungry’s 2025 poll, 84% of Virginians say food costs are rising faster than their income and 52% of families with K-12 students report going into debt due to the price of groceries. School meals could provide food relief but many families find themselves in school meal debt, particularly in the 36 districts with no or limited participation in the community eligibility provision (CEP), which provides free school breakfast and lunch to all without household applications. This bill serves to protect some of the Commonwealth's most vulnerable families and that is why we urge you to support this bill. -Liz Nigro, Voices for Virginia's Children

https://lis.virginia.gov/bill-details/20261/HB38 Violates Constitution as aimed at minorities, also singling them out for being "mental" which can be a source of bullying. https://lis.virginia.gov/bill-details/20261/HB96 Waste, fraud and abuse program. No affordability in where people who are working 2 jobs to pay for their kids, should have to pay for others who make more than they do. https://lis.virginia.gov/bill-details/20261/HB178 This should not be used to buy votes. That's exactly what it is.

Comments Document

Would you send a police officer back into the field while under investigation for abuse? A prison guard? To send a potential abuser back into the school the complaint came from ensures NO CHILD AND NO TEACHER will ever report again! Is that your purpose? As a survivor of child sex abuse - you do NOT protect the feelings of the adult over the trauma of the young. YOU WILL CREATE LIFELONG TRAUMA Why do some teachers and school staff molest, abuse, and rape children? There are a myriad of answers based on motivation, opportunity, and “illness”, but the bottom line is molesters abuse children because they can. Because they think it’s okay. Because they know they can get away with it. Because some communities accept child molestation as a norm and other communities hide their head in the sand. Because people turn a blind eye to childhood sexual abuse with victim-shaming comments like “it happens,” or “I don’t believe it,” or “who waits that long then comes after a good teacher”. Because, on some level, child abusers don’t believe child abuse is wrong and their enablers don’t believe it’s such a big deal. Good and decent people have become an Army of Enablers, not because they are evil but because without all of the facts or any facts, in most cases, for a prolonged period of time a societal group think resulting in a premeditated ignorance and becomes “normal”. It is a deliberate unawareness. Sadly they do not know, because they do not want to know. In knowing good people would have to take responsibility for that knowledge and at the very least leave their comfort zone and do something. Who are we if we ignore children being raped, molested and beaten in the very institutions we have been commanded to hand our children to for the majority of their young lives because “ they know what’s best” ? We become the enablers. We become the complicity of silence. So it is up to us to proclaim ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! It is obvious that it is up to us. One important part of the solution is to build a community that fights back against the norm we no longer accept as true. Instead of shaming victims, the communities we envision shame perpetrators. Instead of ignoring the signs of abuse, the communities we envision educate one another and put safe guards in place that make it more difficult for perpetrators to access children. Instead of throwing up our hands and saying there’s nothing we can do, the communities we envision aggressively pursue legal recourse whenever possible. We must understand that child abuse is committed by a single person but enabled by the village, so it takes a village-of-a-different-kind to turn the tide of decades of ignorance leading to this childhood exploitation. We can do this only if we join forces with others who say, “this is enough,” only if we demand consequences for abusers that are more painful than permission to abuse is gratifying. Only then will we begin to stem the tide of this epidemic that sucks the soul out of those of us who are victims. Building a firewall means acknowledging that abuse happens and putting in place the eyes, ears, awareness, and commitment to make sure it never happens on our watch