SWAMPSCOTT — The decline of mental health among students and staff due to COVID-19 continues three years after the pandemic shut down the country, Superintendent Pamela Angelakis said at a joint meeting between the Finance Committee and the School Committee Monday evening.
Due to mental health issues, the district has had to add more mental health professionals as school staff.
“What the COVID impacts are … 72 districts across the state have reported that the average budget increase for schools and [fiscal year 2024] is 6 percent,” Angelakis said.
But the pandemic has caused much more than an increase in the budget.
On March 13, 2020, Swampscott Public Schools decided to close down and move online for two weeks.
“But that two weeks turned into much more than that,” Angelakis said. “It lasted, online and hybrid learning, far too long and didn’t work for a lot of our students and really left a whole generation of students behind academically, socially and emotionally.”
Staff, she said, has also been suffering. They are under a lot of pressure and receive verbal and email attacks on a consistent basis.
“What we’re seeing in both staff and students is extreme anxiety in the form of panic attacks, depression, and dysregulation,” Angelakis said. “Dysregulation can show up in extreme behaviors, or students are just starting to go into that panic attack mode and just need a break.”
According to Angelakis, the number of mental health visits to the nurse’s office at the middle school in recent months included: seven in September, five in October, eight in November, eight in December, nine in January, and five in February. Students brought up issues such as anxiety or panic attacks, suicidal ideation, self harm, social conflict, or home conflict during these visits.
The number of nurse’s office visits for students that were dysregulated and needed to step away included: 23 in September, 21 in October, 32 in November, 19 in December, 22 in January, and 16 in February.
“In January of 2023, at the high school, we had 38 nurse’s visits that were related to panic attacks, depression or dysregulation, and in February there were 35,” Angelakis said.
There has also been an increase in physical altercations between students as a way of handling disagreements, she said.
“They weren’t learning methods to cope when they were home, online and on hybrid learning,” Angelakis said. “We have an increased number of incident reports, discipline referrals and bullying reports.”
This all resulted in an increased need for mental health resources within the schools.
“Since the pandemic we’ve had to increase mental health staff by five,” Angelakis said.
The school district has also invested in a software program called “GoGuardian,” she said. This software tracks student activity on school devices and sends administrators alerts 24/7.
“If someone is searching a gun if someone is searching how to commit suicide, if someone is searching anything that relates to self harm or harming others,” administration will be alerted and someone has to manage these alerts no matter what time of day it is, Angelakis said.
“We’ve become a health and human services facility versus an educational institution,” she commented.
