ORLANDO, Fla. — The top priority in Florida education is mental health, even more than test scores and budgets, education leaders and state schools superintendents underscored in a mental health summit convening in Orlando.
- Mental Health Summit for educators taking place in Orlando
- Legislators, superintendents discussing mental health issues
- Broward superintendent: 'We need to rethink our public education system'
Put on by the Florida Association of District School Superintendents, the Mental Health Summit has been on the books since January, a month before the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting shook the state and nation.
“We have got to move away from legislating by crisis to really legislating from a standpoint of thinking about the future,” said Broward County Schools Superintendent Robert W. Runcie said Thursday.
Runcie knows better than most what is at stake and he believes the change needed is not small.
“We need to rethink, redesign our public education system so that we can address those mental health, social/emotional learning needs up front,” Runcie said.
This means contracting and bringing mental health staffs to schools, and although that will certainly cost money, the leaders at the summit firmly believe there are other ways to make it work.
“Money is obviously is the resource that drives what we do. I think that there are already a lot of resources out there that districts are unaware that are available to us,” Pasco County Superintendent Kurt Browning said.
The summit was broken up into teaching and work sessions to tackle all sides of the mental health issue. In attendance as well were several state legislators.
“It’s time the bell has rung. It’s time to get something done in this area,” said Florida Sen. Bill Montford, District 3.
The strategies, partnerships and information learned and shared among these leaders will be passed down into all 67 districts.
“We cannot solve this alone. This is not an education problem, this is a societal problem," Runcie said.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this article misspelled Broward Superintendent Robert Runcie's name. It has been corrected.