Title: 2022-11-07-Webinar
Last saved by: Kelly Nasuti

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November 7, 2022 – Raise Your Voice 
   
>> Welcome, everybody. We still have a few more people coming in. We'll get started in just a second. 
   Okay. First of all, welcome. I see a bunch of familiar faces and some new ones here. Today, as you know, we will be talking about multiple systems and kind of, you know the support children and families and kind of where the breakdown has been across multiple systems, largely impacted, as you can imagine, by COVID‑19. 
   So first, just to do a brief Zoom orientation, closed captioning is available. If you click on the CC icon, there should be, at the bottom of your screen, click that, there's an up arrow and it will allow you to display captions. 
   We are not going to be using breakouts this week. We have a very special guest with us who I will introduce in just a moment talking about some critical issues, and we wanted to give everybody time to ask questions, to have open conversation. 
   Please do mute yourself and then unmute to ask questions. You can also use the Chat box or you can raise your hand. You can leave your video on, you can turn your video off. We just want you to be here and participate. Excuse me. 
   We are recording and this will be posted on the website once Laura Perna, our communications director, returns from vacation. 
   Finally, we are not all experts on Zoom. If there is an issue, totally fine. We have Dennis in Chat and Chase who will be watching the chat, and can provide some technical support if needed. You can ask questions in the Chat, if you want to ask questions after this Raise Your Voice session, just raise your hand. 
   We will not use a whole bunch of jargons, acronyms and abbreviations because we know everybody has their different level of familiarity with these things and there's no shortage of them. 
   Today, we are going to start out real quick with a poll. This is multiple choice. This may be a first for us. We usually only give you one. I'm going to go ahead and launch the poll, then read it. 
   First of all, let me back up and provide my audio description. I apologize. I am a white middle‑aged woman with brown hair up in a bun and a red headband. I'm wearing a black shirt and my background is blurred. 
   Let me go ahead and launch the poll. This is why we are here, right? So after numerous investigations, not just recently but even over the years, lots of media coverage, there have been outcries from individuals, from groups, from organizations, to address some critical issues impacting Texas children. 
   So again, check all that apply. Which of the following are you familiar with? Maybe you have heard about or you have been following for some time. The first choice is special education. The second is child care. The third is Child Protective Services. The fourth is youth justice, and finally, school safety. 
   So I'm going to go ahead and launch this and you guys, I will give you time, a couple minutes, to make sure you have enough time to answer the poll. 
   I see Jen apparently did a really good job during our last Raise Your Voice because so many people are now familiar with youth justice and are following that. Okay. We'll wait just a few more seconds. I know we just had somebody else join us. I believe that's Stephen. 
   So it looks like about 86% of you have some kind of knowledge or have been following what's happening in special education. About 36% in child care. About 43% in Child Protective Services. 50% in youth justice and 50% in school safety. 
   We can't obviously say that one of these is more important than the other. They are all really critical systems, you know, that are meant to support and protect our children in Texas, and so you may be asking yourself within all of these, how does this impact kids with disabilities? So we're going to talk about that. That's why we're here. 
   The first item we are going to talk about, I think it's the one most of you are familiar with, and this is an ongoing issue that has a whole bunch of other buckets of issues under the larger umbrella of special education. We know Texas has a long history, obviously, of, this is an issue CTD has been covering for a very long time. 
   But Texas has a long history of not quite getting it right when it comes to special education, identifying students who are eligible, providing timely evaluations, providing services or, you know, even just transitioning so from early childhood intervention to early childhood special education to K through 12 and then whatever post‑secondary opportunities there are after. 
   We know there are a lot of spots in there where kids can fall through the cracks, and that's certainly true here in Texas. One of the greatest things that we have discussed on here as well, and it can't be ignored but the impact that COVID and other events have had on the work force in Texas. 
   We do know several reports have highlighted that special education teachers, bilingual teachers, the shortages have really hit those two specific professions disproportionately. 
   So we know that we have a shortage of special education teachers or paraprofessionals, and that certainly we see that impacting students with disabilities. There are still delays in identification of students. This is continuing now almost three years since COVID knocked on our door, where we saw this huge backlog across various districts in the state of Texas in meeting those timelines for kids, getting ‑‑ identifying eligible kids or potentially eligible kids, completing evaluations on time, implementing those plans, those individualized education plans for students with disabilities, having those implemented on time and even the service array being limited due to shortages, like speech therapists and counselors, occupational therapists, aides. 
   So you know, how do we move forward from here. You know, there have been a number of proposed solutions, many that are just not new, one of them being looking at how we fund special education in Texas. 
   We know that currently, there's kind of this perverse incentive to have more restrictive placements for students who might otherwise be able to access the general education classes, learn alongside their non‑disabled peers with additional support. However, the funding weights are very different. 
   What we know is that on one end of the spectrum, we're looking at complete general education with no supports which is not a reality, and then on the other end, complete self‑contained, but we know that kids, the majority of kids if not all are falling somewhere along the middle. 
   And so recommendations from us and from other partner organizations and legislators have been to fund the service array and not the physical placement, because we know special education is not a place ‑‑ there are other issues we have been keeping a close eye on. Sadly, are instances of restraint and use of force. How is this related to teacher shortages? 
   Well, if we have schools that are understaffed, we have a lot of subs, we have a lot of paraprofessionals who are not certified teachers who are stepping in and leading classes, they're exhausted, they are feeling underappreciated in our current climate in Texas, and so we have seen an uptick of improper restraints, of use of force. 
   Some of you may remember we issued a joint statement with Disability Rights Texas and some other core advocacy organizations almost a year ago calling on lawmakers to really look at this, to step up and to take action, and we are going to continue to push that as we move into this next legislative session. Excuse me. 
   The second area we are going to talk about is child care. If you guys have questions as we are talking, feel free to put them in the Chat and we will definitely be checking those, and you will have plenty of opportunity to ask questions when we're finished as well. 
   Child care, we know, is critical for our work force. We know that working parents rely on high quality, safe child care so that they can work, they can go to school. It's also really important developmental stage, where kids are learning problem‑solving, they are learning social skills, you know. They are learning how to communicate. 
   Not all have equal access to high quality child care. This is true certainly before the pandemic, but the pandemic has certainly exacerbated that. Child care providers are still suffering, even compared to pre‑pandemic. Lot of reasons for this. Very low pay. Very, very low pay. 
   We talk about this a lot at CTD. Some of the most valued, most important folks, like those attendants that we rely on, are really underpaid and haven't seen a bump in kind of base salary in a very long time. They also don't have, typically, have any benefits so when you're thinking about really being taxed because you don't have any time off, you don't get holidays, you don't get sick pay, it's another contributing factor. 
   Rising costs. We all see it when we go to the grocery store. We have all seen rising costs in housing. We have seen just day‑to‑day materials that we may need to access. That's certainly true within child care centers as well. 
   Some providers have just closed permanently, you know. It's really hard to try and hang on even with some small boosts to child care financially. It was just too much, so we have seen just a decrease in the availability of providers across the state of Texas, which obviously impacts all of us, even more so, say, in rural areas where there are already very few options. 
   Affordability, you know, again, rising costs. Some folks saw employment decreased or lost their employment and were trying to get back into the work force. How do we do that? We have to be able to afford child care and that's becoming increasingly unaffordable. It already was bad prior to COVID. We do need more opportunities for safer subsidized child care for those very low income families. 
   You know, we need more options. We need to support not just the work force ‑‑ excuse me ‑‑ for child care providers, but also for the families so that they can get access to child care. 
   One thing that you probably hear me talk about a lot is opportunities for inclusive child care for our young children with disabilities. Having a provider who is well‑trained, having a provider who can collaborate well with the family or even an early childhood intervention specialist that's working with their young child. 
   Knowing the requirements to provide care unless it's an assessment of the child's needs and reasonable accommodations exceed what the child care provider can do, but what we have found is providers are often unaware that the Americans with Disabilities Act applies to them, so there can't be a blanket policy of we just don't take kids with disabilities. This is an issue we have been working on for several years. 
   We are really happy to report at least in this area, impacting children, that we have seen the Health and Human Services Commission take a step in the right direction and really meaningfully consider some of the recommendations that CTD has previously provided, some items that were included in our inclusive child care bill we worked on with Representative Gonzalez's office last session. 
   We have seen some changes there. We are hoping that we are turning a corner but until it's official, it's not official, right? This is something that we will continue to monitor as well. 
   Finally, this is the final item before I kick it over to Jennifer Toon, but perhaps one of the hardest for us to talk about is Child Protective Services. The Department of Family and Protective Services has long been riddled with scandal, violations, our foster care system has been deemed unconstitutional and placing children at severe risk. 
   What does that look like today? I'm going to share some alarming stats and these are things that maybe you guys have heard in the media, some of you who work directly with children may have already been concerned with. But really important statistics for us to know. This is the data that's out there. 
   We know, unfortunately, about 1 in 10 children without disabilities are victims of some kind of abuse or neglect. That number for kids with disabilities is 1 in 3. That's unacceptable. Excuse me. 
   Another statistic. While 5.2% of school‑aged children have a disability, in Texas, children with disabilities are overrepresented in the DFPS system, making up 53% of the current caseload. 
   So as you can see, that's pretty shocking. 5.2% of kids, school‑aged kids have a disability but we see this drastic overrepresentation when we're looking at those kids within the DFPS system. 
   We know that Texas is currently not compliant with the Federal Family First program. This supports keeping families together, right. We are always trying to ensure that to the greatest extent possible, we keep families together. But Texas is failing in that respect. 
   That can be particularly dangerous for, say, a family who has a child with a disability and maybe that parent, that parent knows the medical history, that parent knows all the medications and the therapies, they know how to work with their child. They know what's effective, really in any respect, you know, they are the expert on their child. 
   So if you remove that, which we are often too quick to do, that kid goes into a system that is not prepared and is not set up for them. 
   We also know that the outcomes are not good. They are 50%, kids with disabilities are 50% less likely to be adopted. They are less likely to finish high school. They are less likely to go on to some post‑secondary opportunities. They often, about 20% of them are just instantly homeless when they age out. 
   Then they are also subjected to financial abuse in some instances. For instance, if there is a child with a disability in foster care and they are eligible for Social Security, and that foster care parent, adult, caregiver, applies for Social Security, we are talking about a minor with a disability. So they become the designated payee which essentially means they are controlling that money. 
   So that's also really concerning for kids who find themselves in the foster care system. So I know this has been a lot of really heavy stuff, but we are going to talk about what can we do, and what is on the horizon. 
   Before we do that, I'm going to kick it over to Jennifer Toon, who is going to share the latest in TJJD and youth justice. 
>> Thanks, Jolene. I'm Jennifer Toon. I'm the policy Fellow here at CTD. As Jolene's talking about all these systems that continue to fail our children, for most of these kids, it leads, it will lead to one outcome which is the youth justice system, juvenile justice system. 
   Before we get all the way down to TJJD, I want to go back a little bit and talk about Jolene mentioned restraints. So when we talk about the school‑to‑prison pipeline and we call it that because that is exactly what it is. It sets up kids at school to be funneled right into the criminal justice system. 
   How does that happen? Well, first, let's talk about restraints. In 2017‑2018, school year, there was 70,000 students who were restrained. 80% of those restraints were kids with disabilities. They represent 13% of the school student population, but they have 80% restraints. As Jolene said, these numbers are completely unacceptable. 
   You know, we worked on a bill that we are going to have refiled. It was called No Kids in Cuffs. Maybe some of the regulars on the call remember us talking about that bill last session. That would prohibit law enforcement and school resource officers from handcuffing and pepper spraying children under 10 years old. 
   Because shockingly, they do that. So when a child is restrained, often what happens in a school setting, often to cover themselves, they file charges against the child they restrained for assault, and so since we know that the kids that are suffering from these restraints the most are kids with disabilities, they of course are the ones that have the juvenile justice involvement because the school will file charges on them. 
   This is manifestations of disability, right, and they are criminalizing that essentially. So from the school‑to‑prison pipeline, the kids end up in the Texas Juvenile Justice Department, formerly known as the Texas Youth Commission. I see familiar faces from last week's discussion on TJJD. 
   And why is this issue, why is this state agency, state system, so important to us as we talk about our kids? Well, this is where the majority end up, and it is the worst possible outcome for all of our children. So in TJJD, 60% to 80% of that population are children with mental health and/or intellectual or developmental disabilities. 
   As I was researching this, I always promote this book called Who Gets a Childhood by William Bush, a professor at the time of Texas A & M University in San Antonio. Myself and a couple other members of our advocacy group around the campaign to close TJJD facilities will be meeting with him soon so that he can help us with our campaign to finish the five, which refers to shutting down the five state facilities that you may have seen in the news recently 
about just how horrible those conditions are. Kids are kept in isolation, they're not ‑‑ they don't have enough staff to let them out to use the restroom, they're not getting their programs in. It was a huge jump in suicide and self‑harm. 
   What was interesting as I'm digging into the research behind the long history of terrible, terrible abuse and neglect in our juvenile justice system, is that I came across a number that said a research study done in the '30s and '40s showed that 90% of the kids in the system at the time had what we now call IDD. 
   So it shows you that this population has remained a focal point of the juvenile justice system and I have always believed it's, you know, an underlying belief about our kids. I can't understand why else this continues in cycle after cycle of abuse to reform to abuse to reform that this continues to happen. 
   Again, to go back to Jolene's point, this is unacceptable for our kids. So we will be working on the campaign to close those facilities, many of them that are 100 years old that this abuse and neglect is happening, and get our kids into real care, trauma‑informed care, get them back into the community and start treating this like the public health crisis that it is. 
   So I want to turn this over to Josette. Please introduce yourself. We will talk about mental health, because as we have talked about all of these systems with our kids, I think the overall ‑‑ overreaching theme here is what's happening to our kids' mental health in every single one of these systems. 
>> Yeah, thank you, Jennifer. Thank you, everybody, for inviting me here to talk today a little bit about I think some of the gaps and the opportunities related to children's mental health. I am Josette Saxton, director of mental health policy at Texans Care For Children. To give a description of myself, I have longish brown hair. I wear glasses. I think behind me is probably a messy bookcase and desk. 
   Don't judge me too harshly on that. 
   So to start off, just to sort of echo back to I think what Jolene was saying earlier that we know that a lot of kids were struggling before the pandemic with mental health concerns. And that these concerns were actually rising in recent years so even like in the past decade, just for an example, this is from data that was sort of collected at the federal level but it is for Texas kids, it was estimated that 1 in 10 youth in Texas had an ADHD diagnosis. Attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder. 
   About 1 in 11 kids had behavioral or conduct problems. About 1 in 12 kids has anxiety. About 1 in 20 kids have depression. This was before going into the pandemic. 
   I don't think it's any surprise we know the pandemic was hard, especially hard on kids who were already struggling. It was hard on kids who had a developmental disorder or mental health concerns. 
   So it's really important that we not only are addressing the needs of kids who have a mental health diagnosis, who need access to services and supports, but also to really look at how are we supporting the mental health and wellness of all of our kids, because so many kids have been impacted through the challenges in recent years. 
   One of the things I wanted to highlight, too, is that when we're looking at the services and supports that schools are supposed to provide students with disabilities, that for many kids with mental health concerns, even those with a diagnosed mental health disorder, and even many of those kids who have what the public mental health system considers or identifies as a serious or severe emotional disturbance, that does not automatically mean that a student will be eligible for special education services. 
   So when we're thinking about kids that are struggling with mental health concerns, we know that like all kids, they're spending so much time in school, that it's really a place where we should not only be provided targeted interventions and supports to help kids who need a little more help to be able to, again, not ‑‑ I want to stress it's not that we're looking for schools to treat mental health concerns among kids, but just like within special education services, if there are things that schools can do to help that child learn, that fall within the areas of social and emotional development or behavior in the mental health domain, it behooves schools to do it to help students learn. 
   Thankfully, in 2019, the legislature did pass some laws that put an expectation on schools, requirements on schools that they have some level of practices and procedures in place to address student mental health, to provide trauma‑informed classroom, hallways, buses, you know, lunchrooms, to also look at how can we help address the important sort of life skills, their social emotional skills such as how to deal with the big feelings that we all feel, how to control some of our impulses and behaviors. These are all things that schools have been told by the legislature that they should have something in place to address. Which is a good thing. 
   I will tell you that in talking with school districts across the state, that they really have been leaning in on trying to help kids feel more connected and more supported, and to help them address some of the traumas and stressors they have experienced the past few years. 
   However, what the legislature didn't do is provide school districts with any funding to be able to implement these practices. 
[Overlapping voices]. 
   You know, do better in school. I will say these type of school‑wide practices, they have been shown to help all kids do better in school, academically, socially, behaviorally. But they are really important for kids I think with disabilities. And they are really important for kids that do have a diagnosable mental health concern. 
   As I mentioned, I think a big gap here is while the legislature made pretty significant investments to make sure schools can have like the physical security, to meet the physical security needs that they might have, so ‑‑ which are important, and they have not provided that same level of direct support to schools to be able to implement the school‑wide sort of social emotional psychological safety practices. 
   And being able to provide, you know, interventions there in the school to help students who might be struggling with trauma, with mental health concerns. Or address the mental health needs of students who may be receiving special education services. 
   So one of the things I will just sort of mention, sort of jumping ahead, among the children's mental health sort of advocacy community, a lot of us, one of our big focuses going into the upcoming session is to have the legislature provide school districts directly ‑‑ with funding directly for school‑wide comprehensive mental health sort of approaches and practices. 
   So some of you might have heard that the legislature has invested in a program called TCHATT. Forgive me, I always stumble on spelling of that acronym but basically, what this program is, it's a great program, it allows families to access mental health services using telehealth technology with a mental health professional for a limited amount of sort of visits. Sort of like a short‑term mental health service that families can access within school settings. 
   One thing to note, though, is that the majority of kids who have mental health concerns don't need that level of services or it might not ‑‑ their services might not meet all of the things that the child may need while they're in a school setting to help them be successful. 
   So one of the things I want to sort of leave with you all is that yes, the legislature has put in place some good laws and expectations and requirements on our school districts to support students' mental health, and while they have provided funding more for the school hardening side of school safety, and they have provided funding to provide mental health services in schools, school districts are not receiving any funding to really address the mental health needs of all kids. 
   So going into session, we are hoping that the legislature can now start to increase helping schools to use these things like trauma‑informed practice, positive behavioral interventions and supports, restorative justice practices, social and emotional skills building. 
   One of the things that I want to mention, too, to sort of piggyback off of what Jennifer had said about the youth justice, there is a big concern that when kids are responding to trauma, when they are ‑‑ when their behaviors or actions that stem from an underlying mental health concern, be that acting out with challenging behavior or be it just disengaging from their schoolwork, that schools will go to more of the disciplinary response in trying to address it, and as y'all are very aware, very well aware of that the way schools are responding to our students' behaviors can ‑‑ does really impact how well they are going to do. And unfortunately, when our schools are relying on the more traditional disciplinary, exclusionary response, one, it's not effective because the behaviors, if they are stemming from trauma or mental health concerns or a disability, we know that just discipline is not going to take care of it. It's not going to produce the desired outcome. So while there has been a lot of discussion over the past few months about supporting student mental health and children's mental health in the wake of Uvalde, there is still a lot of ‑‑ there has also been a lot of discussions at the Capitol and comments made that are sort of teeing up some ‑‑ making it more easy for schools to discipline kids and remove them from their classroom for behaviors. 
   So while we are looking for schools to receive funding to help support student mental health, we also need to make sure that they are appropriately responding and not using discipline inappropriately. 
   I just wanted to now switch sort of from the school piece to talk about for those kids that have significant mental health concerns that do require mental health treatment. 
   One of the big gaps that we're seeing, and there's gaps everywhere, also acknowledging what Jolene said about work force shortages and sort of the capacity of the work force to be able to provide the types of services our kids need has really been stretched across the board. 
   We're finding that with the local mental health authorities, which are sort of the safety net providers for community‑based mental health services for kids, that they are definitely feeling that stretch. They are seeing increased number of kids that are coming in with greater mental health needs. 
   But yet, they are having a hard time keeping their staff and then also, or they might have staff but it's not necessarily the staff that they need to be able to provide the specific services that kids need. So in other words, our community mental health centers are doing I think a really good job if a child is referred to them from a school, from TCHATT or family seeking services, that they can provide them with an intake or assessment, some level of services. 
   But families have to often wait for a long time to be able to receive something like say cognitive behavioral therapy, which might be what their assessment indicates that they may need. Families could really benefit from family partner services which is peer support for a family who is, you know, help in their child's treatment and helping the child be able to stay at home and be helpful at school. 
   But families don't have access to ‑‑ not as many families will have access to the services just because, again, we have these work force sort of issues at the local mental health authority level. 
   Yes? 
>> I was going to hop in real quick. I think we have some questions in the Chat already. Dennis, I think you and Chase have been tracking those, is that correct? Dennis mentioned that ‑‑ 
>> Yes. This is one that came up about related to special education. The question is, is this drive for school vouchers to allow parents to access public education dollars to pay for private education good or bad for students with disabilities? 
>> This is a question that comes up often and students with disabilities are usually the population where the legislature's like okay, you go first, you're going to go through the door first and we're going to try to leave it open for everybody else. 
   The reality of it is that if a voucher system was established in the state, I think there's this misconception I'm going to get everything, all the money my kid's getting right now and I can go wherever I want to go and I can get better services at a private school. Unfortunately, private schools do not receive federal funding and do not have to comply with IDEA so your child is not guaranteed an individualized education plan. 
   There's no recourse if your child is not getting free appropriate public education. They can choose whether or not to accept, they can choose when they want to dismiss and keep your tuition, as I learned actually this week. 
   Additionally, there is already kind of this mechanism in place under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act which gives us special education, there's a mechanism already in place to be able to get private placement when the school district is unable to provide free appropriate public education. 
   I think the final point I'll make is that, you know, if you look at what it would cost to say piece together an educational services in the private sector for your child, that means academic, all the functional supports, behavior supports, communication, related services like therapies, that's going to cost a heck of a lot more than you would get with a voucher. 
   It's exponentially more, so it's not really an equal I get all this and it translates the same when I go into the private sector. CTD has long been opposed to vouchers. We don't have a guarantee that every private school would comply with IDEA. We don't have a guarantee that it would be the same amount that is needed for all of the services based on individualized need and not just availability of money. 
   So that's kind of where we stand. 
   Are there any other questions, Dennis? 
>> Yes. This is an interesting one. How can ‑‑ this harkens back to a recent dark time in Texas history and still there's residuals there. How can we ensure that kids with complex needs grow up in families, not institutions? 
>> I think that's a question for Josette. I have my own question for her. I can put you on the spot after. 
>> I want to say I think that it's really important to make sure that families are provided with services, you know, as much as possible in the community. We cannot keep waiting for a child to go into crisis and then look to places like residential treatment or hospitals to be sort of the go‑to intervention, because it might be the only place available where somebody might have access to. 
   Also want to mention, you know, when we're looking at the intersection of kids with both a mental health concern and a disability, that it's even harder to access services. Hear from families that if they need to find let's say even crisis services for their child who might have a developmental delay or a disability or a disorder, that they're turned away from mental health providers because they say that they're not equipped, or they don't have services for kids with a dual diagnosis. 
   So I think in terms of what do we need broad, we need more community‑based interventions and options. I think for families. I also want to say, too, though, I mentioned earlier about family partner services. Some of the biggest things that I hear from families that makes a difference in being able to safely keep their child that might have complex mental health concerns in their home is having somebody with lived experience who is raising a child with complex mental health concerns who has been trained to provide that peer support to the family members and to sort of advocate and navigate the systems, I think increasing access to that type of support in addition to those more intensive community‑based supports like things that are offered like wrap‑around service planning, like the Yes waiver program. And crisis respite facilities. 
   These are the types of things I think can help families, keep families together and out of these more institutional settings, even again, keeping kids out of the juvenile justice system in CPS and so that I think is really important for our lawmakers when they're looking at investing in children's mental health, it cannot just be in TCHATT which is a few health services that are provided to some kids. 
   Or looking to build state hospital beds. We need really to shore up our community‑based mental health services that provide those more intensive services that can help keep families together. 
>> You bring up a really good point, when we were thinking about children's mental health, it's not just direct service to the child but also, it does impact the whole family. You mentioned respite and other supports within the community. I think that it's really important to note that and emphasize that. 
   I do have a quick question for you, Josette. When we're thinking about school safety, which obviously is going to be a hot topic this session, we have these two pieces, right. We have the school safety and the emergency planning, then we have the threat assessments. 
   We often caution we don't want students with disabilities or mental health needs to get scooped up, you know, disproportionately in those threat assessments, but can you talk really about in terms of trauma and the effects of multiple school safety drills on young children. I mean, I know that that's been some concern in the media recently. I don't know if you can speak to that just a little bit. 
>> Well, I think just even in general, I think the school safety drills, especially those where it might be I don't want to say like an active shooter drill, where kids are present, not trauma‑informed. There's research out there that's showing it's making kids feel ‑‑ I should say some kids feel like less safe. 
   Again, just being traumatic. I think there's been even just case study examples saying how if you hear something that you think is a real let's say emergency on campus, and you don't know any better, it could trigger other traumatic experiences that you've had, and so yeah, in general, I don't think that they have been shown to be ‑‑ I don't think the research is great. Don't quote me on this, though, because I don't have anything right in front of me. 
   But in general, I don't know if they really help kids feel safer, but we do know that it can be traumatic for kids. So it is important that for any type of safety drill, even being a weather drill or, again, an active shooter drill, it is paramount that schools have that trauma lens and not needlessly expose our kids to things that are just going to make it worse for them. 
>> Thanks, I appreciate that. 
>> Interesting question, I will call this a jolting question in the Chat from Linda, our friend at Texas Parent to Parent. I don't think this could be passed by so I will toss it out there. 
   Linda asks we have had two kids charged with class III felonies this week for hitting their teacher. Is this allowed? Maybe Jen can lead on this one. All of you might have something to say about this. 
			>> Yeah. Go ahead, Jolene. 
			>> I was just going to say, we see it all the time. It's not even when the student is necessarily being the aggressor. For instance, we see kids getting charged with assault for trying to break free of a restraint and you know, they end up hitting the teacher in the meantime. Unfortunately, it's more common than you would think, but I will let Jen elaborate. 
>> Yeah. This is exactly the example of the school‑to‑prison pipeline. Kids are a manifestation of a disability or you know, being pinned down, oftentimes the restraints are not even proper, so again, as a way for the school district to protect themselves, they charge the child with an assault and like Jolene said, we see this all the time. 
   Above your comment, Linda, someone asked the juvenile justice facilities were closed where would youth be served. There's a really interesting program out of Harris County called the First Program. Before a child can be detained in their juvenile justice center, the officers have to contact the DA's office to get permission to do that first. 
   The DA looks through that, does this child have a diagnosis of mental health or intellectual developmental disabilities, is this child in CPS or foster care and really takes time to look at that child's history and say no, we're not going to do that, we're not going to charge them, we're going to put them in the First program which helped them with whatever crisis they're going through. 
   So if we had duplicates of that type of programming that even schools could do, we wouldn't have kids just automatically charged with felonies, and once they get into the system, y'all, once they get into the juvenile justice system or even get tried as adults, because children as young as 14 can be tried as adults, services become extremely limited, almost nonexistent. 
   Any type of accommodations, I have been in both systems, you can forget it. It's not going to happen and it becomes a dark veil just comes over transparency to be able to see what's happening to your child, what kind of services they're getting, any type of accommodations. The school system's bad but the criminal justice system is even worse. 
   So if we closed juvenile justice facilities, what would we do, how would those kids get served? They would get served in community cares or diversion programs like this one in Harris County. The facilities we are talking about closing are the five state facilities, institutions that have been used for, two of them, for almost 100 years. 
   They are in rural counties without staff, without mental health professionals. It's just dismal. It goes to decriminalizing childhood behaviors. We wouldn't be able to charge children with assault if we decriminalize certain behaviors to begin with. 
   So that's part of the process in doing that. Then, and Texas has done this before. We closed several facilities when the round of scandals happened in 2007, we closed several youth facilities and we did some decriminalization and we got that population down from 1,000 to 600. So Texas has done this before. It's just we want to get that population just as down as much as we can, because there will always be a core group of kids that really need specialized treatment. 
   I know I did when I was 15 in the system, and I may not have been served well in the community. It may not have been safe for me or my community. So beginning to treat these kids in institutions or facilities that are modern, near urban centers that are able to staff it properly and hopefully be able to put it under Human and Health Services as the health crisis it is and not in an incarcerable setting. 
>> Great answer. We're kind of at the end of our time. I will just briefly, there is one unanswered question from Glenda about whether counselors are trained, whether they are doing less counseling and more school administrative support. Josette answered they are all expected to be able to provide academic and developmental counseling, including for kids with disabilities. Whether they are actually doing that, that statistic, I'm sure we will be looking at that and we will be advocating for that. 
>> Can I add, there was legislation, good legislation that passed last session that did require school districts to establish a policy saying that ‑‑ or a policy that allowed school counselors to have 80% of their time for counseling duties. Because there is also a big concern where they were even allowed to do their academic counseling, and sort of career path or applying for colleges or courses. 
   So at least now there's probably more restrictions on how school districts can use their counselors. But it's recognizing that even when counselors are counseling, a lot of them are focused on academics. 
   So just because a school counselor may be on campus and a lot of schools don't have them on campus, but if they do have one, that they might not really be available to address the social emotional concerns, the mental health needs of their kids. 
>> Thank you. That's a very good point. We may be missing the boat on what counselors should view as a priority. You know, folks, I have really enjoyed being kind of a support person for this Raise Your Voice session today. We are supposed to be the adults in the room. We are supposed to be watching out for the kids. Really, we shouldn't expect them to advocate for themselves or know what it is to get a fair shake as a kid growing up. 
   We shouldn't have kids under 10 years old be handcuffed in school. We shouldn't have them charged with felonies. We shouldn't be putting them in juvenile justice facilities. We shouldn't be having them grow up in nursing homes when we have proven success of supporting families to take them in, extra support for foster care kids with disabilities. 
   You know, if we can't advocate for this, what can we advocate for? So I would encourage everyone to really hang on and pay special attention to children's issues into the upcoming session. They claim there's going to be some opportunity for movement. There will be opportunity for funding. And you know what, the time is long past due. This has to be a priority. 
   And the priority can't be doing things like as we heard, hardening the schools, making them more unfriendly, making them an environment that's more difficult to learn, an environment that you're scared in. 
   As a former classroom teacher myself, that just drives me crazy. It's the idea of taking public education money for schools that don't have to respect the basics civil rights of their students with disabilities. 
   I want to thank Josette and of course, Jen and Jolene, my colleagues. Next is November 22nd, will be our last Raise Your Voice of the year. We will wrap up a few things and talk about what's coming up in 2023 in the x the legislative session. The election will be over by then. Maybe we will have some interesting expected or unexpected things to talk about at that time. 
   Raise Your Voice is free to all its participants. Of course, it really isn't free and to make that happen, our sponsors, briefly, those are AbbVie, Touch of CLASS, We Work for Health Texas, Amgen, Astra Zeneca, Bristol‑Myers Squibb, Amerigroup. 
   Thank you all for joining us today. This was a real thought‑provoking one. It will stay with me for quite a while after this. Thank you all for showing up. Take care. 
[End of session]. 
   
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