NC children’s advocates push for more funding to improve student mental health

North Carolina’s Child Fatality Task Force is hopeful 2027 brings new attention and more financial resources to issues they have been urging the General Assembly to address for years. With Democrats taking control of the N.C. House and Republicans holding a slim majority in the N.C. Senate, members highlighted on Tuesday their priorities for the legislative session that begins in January.

While the state has recently recorded improvements in youth mental health, serious challenges remain for students who are struggling. Topping the list is the need for the state to invest in more school nurses, counselors, social workers and school psychologists.

North Carolina needs four times the number of school social workers and psychologists that it currently has to meet nationally recommended ratios,  according to Whitney Belich, co-chair of the Intentional Death Prevention Committee.

Because not enough state funding is available for those support personnel positions, they’re often paid for using a combination of state and local funds. Small and rural counties that don’t have those local funds often leave the positions unfilled.

School support personnel play a critical role in identifying students’ needs and preventing crises and tragedies, Belich said, but the unfortunate reality is that whether a child has access to a school nurse or a counselor depends on where they go to school.

“Many of our North Carolina schools go without any of these support personnel on a daily basis,” Belich explained. “It is very spotty.”

North Carolina earned an “F” in mental health in the 2025 N.C. Child Health Report Card. There was also no new funding for support personnel in the 2026 state budget.

Without dedicated personnel in the schools, Belich says the state is likely to see an increase in adverse outcomes for North Carolina youth.

According to the 2025 North Carolina High School Youth Risk Behavior Survey released in August, almost 30% of high schoolers said they felt sad or hopeless. More than 11% said they had seriously considered suicide.

In the 2024-25 school year, school nurses reported having 579,000 counseling sessions with students. Of those, 18,000 sessions were related to depression, suicide ideation or other mental health issues.

“Only 21% say that they’ve been able to get the kind of help that they need,” Belich said. “That is startling and disturbing.”

Annie Goldberg is a nationally board-certified school counselor who works in the Alamance-Burlington School System.  She said her own school district has gone from being fully staffed with support personnel to struggling as federal COVID stabilization money dried up.

This year, Goldberg, a finalist for the 2026 National School Counselor of the Year, finds herself stretched very thin.

“My district went through a really serious reduction in force, and I am now the only counselor at my middle school of about 730 students,” Goldberg said.

Goldberg said the needs keep increasing among students, but the funding for trained personnel to respond to serious situations has not followed.

One potential bright spot on the horizon in 2027 is the settlement of the Meta lawsuit. As part of a multistate settlement, the owners of Facebook and Instagram have agreed to pay North Carolina up to $645 million by 2035. The first $45.2 million payment was made to the state in October.

Meta to pay North Carolina up to $645 million in landmark settlement

The panel voted Tuesday to urge lawmakers to support recurring funding for school nurses, social workers, and counselors to support student mental health needs, using the Meta settlement as a possible funding stream.

“There are already bills being put together about ensuring that the Meta funding all goes to children — making sure that money is spent the way it was intended,” said Karen McLeod, co-chair of the task force.