Sponsors (4)
This bill directs new, multi-year federal resources and evidence-based guidance to strengthen school staff mental-health supports and suicide prevention, but limited funding, eligibility and administrative constraints, and timing of reports risk uneven implementation and sustainability—especially in under-resourced and rural communities.
Education professionals and school staff nationwide will receive evidence-based best practices, training, and resources to prevent suicide and improve mental health and resiliency within two years.
School staff will be better able to identify and respond to student suicide risk and substance-use disorders, potentially preventing suicides and crises among students.
The bill provides multi-year federal funding to develop and disseminate national materials and to fund local programs (authorizing $10M/year for national materials and $35M/year in grants for FY2026–FY2028), creating some funding certainty to support school mental-health activities.
Authorized funding levels are likely insufficient to meet nationwide K–12 and higher-education mental-health needs, so many schools may still lack adequate services.
The bill mainly creates guidance, reports, and recommended practices but does not guarantee sufficient implementation funding, so identified needs may go unmet in practice.
Implementation may be inconsistent and the grant eligibility rules exclude some community-based providers, meaning rural and under-resourced schools and certain local partners may be left out.
Based on analysis of 6 sections of legislative text.
Requires HHS/ED to identify best practices, run an awareness initiative, fund grants/contracts, and report to Congress to improve educators' mental health and resiliency, with authorized funding for FY2026–FY2028.
Official title: Address behavioral health and well-being among education professionals and other school staff.
Introduced April 30, 2026 by Timothy Michael Kaine · Last progress April 30, 2026
Directs HHS (with ED) to identify and share evidence-based practices and to run a national education and awareness initiative to support the mental health, resiliency, suicide prevention, and substance use disorder care-seeking of educators and other school staff. It also creates competitive grant and contract programs for SEA/LEAs and institutions of higher education to establish or expand mental health and resiliency programs, requires an ED-led review and reports to Congress, and tasks GAO with assessing federal mental health/substance-use grant alignment. The bill authorizes multi-year funding for the awareness initiative ($10M/year FY2026–FY2028) and grant programs ($35M/year FY2026–FY2028). The law focuses on prevention, training, stigma reduction, peer-support, referrals to care, program evaluation, and federal coordination; it sets timelines for dissemination and reporting (mostly 2 years) and requires program monitoring and a GAO review within four years.