The legislature’s interim Education Committee tied in a vote to move forward a draft bill that would have created a K-12 mental health policy for the state. Under Wyoming legislature rules, a tie means it fails.
The bill was researched and written by the Mental Health and Vulnerable Adult Task Force.
Rep. Lloyd Larsen (R-Lander) is the committee’s chair. He said the point of the bill was to create a state policy for schools on how to deal with mental health.
“The dilemma was: Do we turn our schools into mental health providers, or do we somehow navigate and manage the population that have mental health challenges to facilitate or coordinate them being, having access to mental health services?” said Larsen. “The Task Force has come back to this committee and are recommending that it would strongly encourage us to avoid turning our schools into mental health providers and to really be able to equip the schools with the ability to screen or identify those people who have, who are having mental health issues.”
As written, districts would have had an option to adopt a program under the U.S. Department of Education called Project AWARE (Advancing Wellness and Resiliency in Education). It started in 2014 under the Obama administration as a part of a federal safer schools initiative.
Project AWARE has already done pilot programs in 13 districts in the state using federal funds. Those funds will run out at the end of 2026.
The program is a collaborative approach with students, parents and families. When services are deemed appropriate for the family and the student, it starts a referral model.
“That referral model is based on a framework of three items: prevention, recognition and referral,” said Dustin Brown with the Wyoming Department of Education. “This goes back to our construct where we want educators to be educators and we want healthcare providers to be healthcare providers. So what we do is we bridge the gap between education and health care and get the students the necessary services [to] support student needs with anxiety, depression, PTSD and oppositional defiant disorder.”
The bill would’ve put aside over $11 million to fund the program for all school districts through June 2026, without requiring any school district to adopt it. The money would help fund a community project manager position for each district that decided to adopt the program. It essentially would create a policy for the state and a financial structure for dealing with mental health for students.
During the committee meeting, discussion circled around how and where the funding would come from, why Project AWARE was not specifically named in the bill and whether language saying parental consent is required should be included in the bill.
“I indeed believe the bill needs to include that clarity because, again, I think right now we all have that clarity,” said Rep. Marth Lawley (R-Worland). “I accept the department’s [of education] intent, but I think it’s important as we talk about referring students that we could easily amend and clarify that all of those things would happen with parental involvement and consent.”
Larsen replied to the desire of parental consent by saying it’s part of Project AWARE.
“I do believe that we need to say that the intent is that the department operates Project AWARE,” continued Lawley. “I think you guys understand that you had a lot of conversations, which I have no objection to particularly, but I think it should be in the bill that we reference the particular program that we’re funding.”
Ultimately, the committee declined to adopt any resolutions that would explicitly add parental consent or Project AWARE in the bill.
After the meeting, Larsen said he plans to introduce the same exact bill as a personal one in the upcoming session.
“As we’ve [the Task Force] worked on this, school districts and parents have reached out and, in my opinion, validated that there really is a concern with the increase of some mental health challenges that we’re seeing in the schools,” he said.
He said the whole point of the Task Force was to figure out the role of the state in the youth mental health crisis. This bill was the conclusion of that.
“The K-12 system should have the capacity to identify, to stabilize and to refer,” said Larsen.
The legislative session begins mid January.
