Kutztown Area School District Administrative Office webstock _ Kutztown Area School District Administrative Office Photo: Harold Hoch 7/31/15
We came together as a community when heroin hit our small town in 2014. We formed a drug use prevention coalition called Kutztown Strong.
We created Oasis, an after-school club for middle and high school students, formed clubs for middle and high school students to promote healthy activities, increased teen activities at the Kutztown Community Library, and launched a health-focused newspaper for elementary school students.
We have strengthened our drug prevention education programs through the Berks County Chemical Abuse Council.
Ten years later, the problem is still there and worse than ever.
Our rural communities are in desperate need of behavioral and mental health funding, and Governor Josh Shapiro’s 2024-25 budget includes $100 million in mental health funding for K-12 schools. Will our 10-year commitment to substance use prevention get our communities the help they need?
I will never forget the quiet voice of another teacher telling me that in 2014, one of my students had died of a drug overdose before his 21st birthday. Eight months earlier, a Brandywine Heights High School graduate had died.
In 2014, 2,570 people died from drug overdoses in Pennsylvania. The southeastern part of the state had the highest number of drug overdose deaths, with 1,167 deaths.
In 2022, 5,144 people lost their lives to drug overdoses in Pennsylvania, double the drug overdose death rate in 2014. Every two hours, someone in Pennsylvania dies from a drug overdose.
In this post-pandemic era, we are still struggling to catch up and keep up. Rural adolescents are more likely to abuse drugs than urban adolescents. Their suicide rate is twice that of urban adolescents. And 44% of rural adolescents suffer from five or more risk factors daily, such as depression, low interest in school, and inaccurate information about the harmful effects of drug abuse. This is 3% higher than the state average of 41%.
A decade ago, Kutztown received a grant from the state Department of Education, secured through a partnership with Sen. Judy Schwank and Berks District Attorney John Adams, that helped with early efforts to bring mental health services to schools.
Through further grant funding with United Way, we developed a relationship with Communities In Schools, which provides social service services to middle schools, and we have an internship partnership with Kutztown University’s School of Social Work to provide social service services to Kutztown, Fleetwood, and Brandywine Heights elementary schools.
But that’s not enough.
We’ve been asking our community how we can help. Since 2014, Kutztown Strong has been reaching out to students through the PA Youth Survey. In 2018, local parents who participated in a Community Needs Assessment told us they wanted more locally accessible behavioral health services for their children.
Without additional funding for behavioral health services, school districts will struggle to meet the needs of their students.
According to the American School Counselor Association, school counselor ratios should be 1 to 250. At my school, Kutztown Area Middle School, we have one counselor for every 299 students. To address one student’s crisis, a counselor must be available all day. Other students have to wait.
We have been working to fill this behavioral health gap through social workers from Communities In Schools and Kutztown University, and this year over 90 families have received support services for mental health, food assistance (provided by Helping Harvest), absenteeism, and student academic concerns.
Communities In Schools has organized school-wide activities for Veterans Day and Red Ribbon Week, designed Christmas cards for Willowbrook Rehabilitation & Healthcare Nursing Home, created the Caring Closet and planned mental health days with Kutztown Strong.
Funding continues to be an issue: The Kutztown School District plans to cut high school social work positions next school year due to a funding shortfall.
I need your help.
Kutztown Strong has always believed in the importance of treating the whole community and family to combat the ever-changing challenges of mental health and substance use. Of Pennsylvania’s 1.41 million public school students, 25% are rural children.
Write or call your state legislators to demand funding for rural school social workers and behavioral health services. Our students need access to behavioral and mental health just as their urban counterparts do. They are counting on us.
Residents of the Kutztown, Brandywine Heights and Fleetwood areas are invited to tell us about their lives and immediate needs by participating in our Community Needs Assessment at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/7BFFPWJ (English) or https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/T6K8GYQ (Spanish).
Beth Patten is a social studies teacher in the Kutztown School District and a board member for Kutztown Strong.
