By Macy Meinhardt, V&V Staff Writer, CA Local News Fellow
Cheryl Robertson, a Lemon Grove School District Board Trustee, was in a taxi riding back from Capitol Hill when she heard the gut-punch news.
An April 29 email from the Department of Education informed Lemon Grove officials that their $2.7 million federal grant—part of a $1 billion national initiative to fund school mental health services—“no longer serves the best interest of the Federal Government.”
Funding for the grant came from the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, signed into law by former President Joe Biden in June 2022. The district has already utilized $1.2 million of the grant to hire and retain five mental health care workers. The remaining half was supposed to last another two years.
Now, that funding will be suspended beginning in December 2025.
The challenges already facing public education, stacked with alarming trends in youth mental health, made the news sting even more.
Robertson had been in Washington, DC, alongside District Superintendent Marianna Vinson and other local education officials as part of a statewide coalition fighting to save other education services on the federal chopping block, such as Medicaid and special education programs.
“It feels like they are cutting us off at the knees while taking the wheels off our wheelchair,” said Robertson.
Finding themselves caught in national political crosshairs, the district is calling upon local, state, and federal leaders to fight against the cuts and help find solutions.
‘Kids are dying’
The timing of mental health support needed in schools is consequential.
The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act was created in response to the Uvalde, Texas school shooting massacre in 2022, which left 19 students and two teachers dead.
Texas-based mental health experts, including Dr. Andy Keller from the Meadows Mental Health Institute, testified that the teenage gunman responsible had exhibited mental health warning signs leading up to the shooting, such as notable absenteeism from classes.
“He is the kind of person who exactly fits the profile of what we would see for multisystemic therapy,” Keller said, during a 2022 Senate hearing after the shooting event.
The mental health needs of marginalized communities add another layer.
The Lemon Grove School District primarily serves marginalized students, with Hispanic students comprising 65% of the student population and Black students making up 13%.
Studies from Pew Research show that Black adolescents are significantly less likely than their peers in other demographic groups to receive mental health care, attributable to systemic inequities and cultural mistrust in the health care system.
‘Filling the gap’
The Department of Education grant allowed districts like Lemon Grove to address gaps in mental health care by employing trained mental health care workers in spaces where kids already spend much of their time: the classroom.
“Their presence is very needed,” said Deputy Superintendent Rebecca Burton.“For a district our size, the loss would be a tremendous hit to our community, our students, our families, and our teachers.”
Sam Put, known to students as Mr. Sam, is one of the five social worker positions filled by the grant. Serving on the crisis team at Vista La Mesa Academy, his background in behavioral health allows him to serve as a vital bridge between the administrative team and students.
In a role that encompasses “many hats,” his day-to-day can involve leading social-emotional learning lessons, managing student behavior plans, conducting group and individual counseling sessions and connecting families with housing, transportation, and other basic needs. Social workers like Sam help ensure students don’t slip through the cracks.
As a resident of the community he serves, “my master goal is to plant seeds in different kids and families to become more resilient, independent people,” said Put.
“Even if I don’t get to see those seeds bloom, I just hope for the best.”
Grant Outcomes
The district was obligated to meet certain objectives through the grant. This included hiring diverse mental health providers, lowering provider-to-student ratios and providing one-on-one services to students. Other grant goals tied to mental health include lowering chronic absenteeism and in-school suspensions.
Two years into the grant, Burton says the district has its goals—and has the numbers to back it up. Chronic absenteeism among Lemon Grove students has dropped by over half, from 47% in 2022 to 24% in 2025. The ratio of mental health staff to students improved from 1 for every 250 students to 1 for every 166. Suspension rates declined from 4.3% to 3.7%.
While the letter received by Lemon Grove officials did not explicitly state why their grant was terminated, it did include language stating that the programs employed were identified to “violate” Federal civil rights laws.
In a statement provided to The New York Times, Madi Biedermann, deputy assistant secretary for communications for the U.S. Department of Education, said the grants had reflected “deeply flawed priorities of the Biden administration.”
“Grant recipients used the funding to implement race-based actions like recruiting quotas in ways that have nothing to do with mental health and could hurt the very students the grants are supposed to help,” said Biedermann.
The thought of losing mental health advocates like Mr. Put in Lemon Grove classrooms brings tears to Robertson’s eyes.
Robertson’s own nine-year-old son is a student in the district and suffers from an anxiety disorder. When she sought outside help, she was told the current wait time for outside services would be 3 to 4 months.
“He was spiraling,” said Robertson.
Then her son was connected to a social worker onsite at his school. Over time, Robertson said, her son was able to socially blossom and the social worker became her son’s most trusted confidant at school.
Meanwhile, the contrast between the federal grant’s benefits and the reason for its cancellation has left many outraged.
Christopher Ferguson Rufo, a far-right senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, made the cuts public through his social media platform, claiming the money was used to advance “left-wing racialism and discrimination.”
“The Left believes that civil rights law should punish whites and reward minorities,” Rufo said in a later X post.
For Robertson, the idea that this initiative somehow infringed on the civil rights of white people is not only misguided, it’s offensive.
“There are kids in our community who are struggling with so many levels of trauma that you couldn’t even comprehend—and we’re cutting this grant because you think it’s DEI and that it is violating the civil rights of white people?” said Robertson.
Lemon Grove leaders are working on appealing the termination of their grant and are also exploring litigation options with other impacted districts throughout the state.
In terms of keeping the grant-funded social worker positions staffed, officials say they intend to “do everything possible” to maintain all of the filled positions until the end of this upcoming school year.
Beyond politics, educators, parents, and mental health professionals agree: students need support for mental health in schools.
“We want our support from everyone across the political aisle to support us in helping raise great kids for the future. That’s what we want to do,” said Burton.
As for Robertson, she said by sharing the district’s story “we hope that we can connect with whoever it is, whether it’s Congress, folks, or families to help us find a way to continue these great programs and support kids.”