MAMH Memorandum Detailing Concerns and in Opposition to H.537/S.279, An Act Relative to Safety and Violence Education for Students

Memorandum sent to the Joint Committee on Education detailing MAMH's concern with and in opposition to H.537/S.276, An Act relative to safety and violence education for students. This legislation would mandate an anonymous top line for a wide range of student behavior occurring in any setting.

Anonymous tip lines and assessment teams neither promote student safety nor improve behavioral health outcomes. Instead, they risk harming students with disabilities, LGBTQ youth, youth of color and youth whose ethnic or cultural backgrounds may differ from the larger school population. And such measures divert resources that could be better spent on efforts that would actually better protect and benefit students.

This memorandum was summited alongside written testimony by the Children's Mental Health Campaign.