Jan 19, 2018, Hartford (CT) Mirror: With no court mandate, what’s next for school funding? https://ctmirror.org/2018/01/19/with-no-court-mandate-whats-next-for-school-funding/ When Connecticut legislators last fall voted to phase-in changes in how the state funds public schools so more aid gets to the neediest districts, many touted it as the right thing to do. That bipartisan dedication to a new education funding formula – which promised to boost state aid by 19 percent, or $380 million, over the next 10 years – may soon start to fray, however. … That decision has made many educators pessimistic that state leaders will find additional money for schools in the absence of a court order. “It looks like we are all alone now,” said Jackie Simmons, the principal of Roosevelt School, an elementary school hit particularly hard by poverty in Bridgeport. “We have our district and that’s it. It’s just absolutely devastating. I feel gutted.” Simmons testified during the trial that led up to the Supreme Court’s school-funding decision that she doesn’t always have mental health staff in her school, which on one particularly troubling occasion forced her to drag a student in crisis to an ambulance. She still doesn’t have mental health staff at her school at all times, and her 24-student kindergarten classes lost their teachers’ aides. …

Childhood Lost
Children today are noticeably different from previous generations, and the proof is in the news coverage we see every day. This site shows you what’s happening in schools around the world. Children are increasingly disabled and chronically ill, and the education system has to accommodate them. Things we've long associated with autism, like sensory issues, repetitive behaviors, anxiety and lack of social skills, are now problems affecting mainstream students. Blame is predictably placed on bad parenting (otherwise known as trauma from home).
Addressing mental health needs is as important as academics for modern educators. This is an unrecognized disaster. The stories here are about children who can’t learn or behave like children have always been expected to. What childhood has become is a chilling portent for the future of mankind.