Each year, The Children’s Agenda and our Very Invested Parent (VIP) group advocate with district leaders and school board members to ensure the RCSD budget reflects the supports and policies our students need to thrive.

On April 1, 2025, TCA’s Director of Community Impact Eamonn Scanlon provided testimony at the RCSD Budget Public Hearing. He outlined our mental health, school climate, and transportation priorities, and explained why these investments are critical to include in the 25-26 RCSD budget.

Read his testimony:

Dear RCSD Commissioners, Interim Superintendent, and State Monitor, 

The Children’s Agenda and our partners at the Very Invested Parents (a group of 70 parents and caregivers) top 3 priorities for the 2025-2026 RCSD Budget are Mental Health, School Climate, and Transportation.

Mental Health in RCSD

Every two years the Youth Risk Behavior Survey is filled out by thousands of RCSD students, revealing trends in youth behaviors, negative life circumstances/experiences, and their mental health.

The most recent survey from the 2023-2024 school year revealed depression among children at RCSD remains troublingly high, with girls at 40% compared to 18% for boys. Mental health has a direct impact on school, as the most recent survey showed 44% of girls had difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making decisions because of mental or emotional challenges compared to 19% of boys. Even more troubling, 12% of girls made a plan to commit suicide in the past year compared to 5% of boys.

A scientific poll paid for by The Children’s Agenda in 2023 showed more than 80% of parents had difficulty finding, affording, and transporting their children to mental health providers. This is why our recommendations include locating mental health resources directly in schools which overcome many of these barriers. 

We also call for programs targeted directly at girls based on the gender differences in depression and suicide ideation. The recommendations we are making today have a lot to do with access to clinical care, but seeing a therapist is not the only way to improve children’s mental health.

The Children’s Agenda wants to acknowledge that poverty, toxic-stress, community violence, racism, and a lack of extracurricular opportunities all contribute to poor mental health. Access to therapy is necessary, while strengthening families and the community would help reduce the mental health needs of all children. 

To remove barriers to accessing care, our goal is for every child to have the ability to access mental health counseling at their school. 

The benefit of partnering with hospitals and mental health clinics is that the services they provide are mainly funded through billing of insurance. After paying the startup costs to create a useable space within or attached to the school, these services are mostly free to district.  

School Based Mental Health Clinics are relatively cheap and simpler to create compared to other more comprehensive models like School Based Health Centers. School Based Mental Health Clinics also receive a 25% enhanced funding rate that allows them more flexibility in the services they provide. RCSD has greatly expanded the number of mental health clinics at RCSD, and more are planned to open next school year.  

A cost-effective way to expand mental health supports would be to continue to expand mental health satellite clinics to schools without any onsite mental health therapists. There has also been a push to expand telehealth to every school without a school-based health center. 

So far telehealth has not been utilized for mental health counseling, and there are concerns about securing private space for counseling sessions and having an adult to be present with the student.  

Telehealth could provide another point of access to mental health counseling but for now it is mainly used for things like medication management and regular health screenings. Telehealth should continue to be expanded, while a greater emphasis should be made on what possible gaps telehealth could fill in the mental health supports landscape of RCSD. 

To provide mental health supports to every student at RCSD we have the following demands: 

• Fund satellite mental health clinics at every school that does not have on-site mental health resources, which will become sustainable through billing of insurance.
• Make telehealth available to all students for behavioral and mental health needs that do not have access to on-site mental health clinical care.
• Create girl specific mental health support programs and supports.
• To the greatest extent possible, the staff providing these services should reflect the lived experiences, racial and ethnic backgrounds, and physical proximity (same neighborhoods) to students with whom they are working.
• Implement the above using a racial equity lens. 

Exclusionary Discipline in RCSD

Our second priority is school climate, specifically exclusionary discipline like suspensions, and why the district should shift to alternative forms of student discipline. 

Suspensions are harmful, because dozens of research studies over the last few decades have shown suspensions associated with poor outcomes for children such as:  

• Suspensions lower the trust and identification children have with their school.
• Each day a child is suspended is associated with lower math and reading scores.
• Children are less likely to graduate from high school or college.
• Children have an increased likelihood of being arrested and incarcerated. 

RCSD has one of the highest suspension rates of any school district in New York State at 15%. Like in every school district across the country, suspensions are more often used on students of color, students with disabilities, and students living in poverty. 

The suspension rate at RCSD jumped significantly after the COVID-19 shutdowns and though it is falling it is still above pre-pandemic levels. The raw total of suspensions has gone down the past few years, but when you account for the drop in student enrollment, the rate of suspensions is higher that it was five years ago. 

Even more troubling, after the COVID-19 shutdown the number of days students were being suspended per student more than doubled. We believe this was because of a huge increase in long-term suspensions. Long-term suspensions have gone down quickly in the last two years, but the number of days students missed due to suspensions remained at a higher rate than before the pandemic. 

We know suspensions may be damaging to students. We also know there are evidence-based alternatives to suspensions, like the pyramid model, social emotional learning, and restorative practices. Policies should strictly limit when suspensions may be used as a last resort and promote alternatives instead. 

From a budget perspective we want the district to adequately fund the alternatives necessary to avoid suspensions, including: 

• Fund 15 Roc Restorative Coaches, there should be at least one Roc Restorative Coach for every high school and middle school.
• Budget $5 million to contract with outside agencies to provide additional professional development and trainings for students/parents on restorative practices.
• Fund Help Zones/alternative to suspension rooms in every school.
• Provide real-time publicly available data on school climate in each building, including through climate surveys of students. 

Transportation in RCSD

Our last policy priority for the 2025-2026 RCSD Budget is timely transportation to and from school. Nationally there is a bus driver shortage, which a recent nationwide survey showed 91% of districts struggling to find drivers. The reasons most often cited for the shortage are the difficulty in finding new drivers and the low pay for the position. In New York State it is estimated there are 20% fewer drivers than needed for home-to-school runs, field trips, athletics, and charters. 

The impact this has on school districts like RCSD is frequent delays in buses picking up students and dropping them back home. This leads to an increase in student absenteeism and puts child safety at a higher risk because of potential lockouts and children being outside after dark.  

Driver shortages are not an easy problem to address, but we have some suggestions for the administration to get a better handle on the problem and give parents more tools for tracking where buses are. 

• RCSD must conduct a comprehensive review of how often buses are late or do not pick up students at RCSD and the corresponding impact on student attendance and safety.
• There should be a system or application for families to track school buses and to be notified of any delays.
• RCSD should review its contracts with outside bus agencies and stipulate more accountability mechanisms for buses being consistently late. 

We ask that you please fund the recommendations mentioned in this letter in your 2025-2026 RCSD Budget. Thank you for your time, and all the work you do on behalf of Rochester’s children.

Sincerely, 

Eamonn Scanlon

To watch TCA staff & VIP leaders discuss these issues on WXXI’s Connections with Evan Dawson, please visit What do parents and child advocates want to see in the RCSD budget? – YouTube

To explore the proposed 25-26 RCSD budget, please visit Finance / RCSD 2025-26 Budget Overview

To learn more about The Children’s Agenda’s education advocacy, please visit Education (Pre-K to 12) – The Children’s Agenda

Eamonn Scanlon is Director of Community Impact with The Children’s Agenda.