Nevada’s Clark County School District, where more than 326,000 students are enrolled, has been completely remote since March 2020 – when the Covid-19 pandemic started. In the nine months since March, there have been 19 student suicides in the district, a school official confirmed to CNN. In the previous year there were only nine.
The district has not shown a direct link between the dead and distance learning. However, six students died by suicide between March 16 and June 30 and 12 students died between July 1 and December 31. There was one more death earlier this month, a district official confirmed to CNN on Monday.
Referring in part to social and emotional well-being, the Clark County Board of Trustees unanimously voted to bring students back for personal learning at a meeting on Jan. 14.
“The COVID-19 pandemic remains a major challenge for education,” said Chief Inspector Dr. Jesus Jara. “We will continue to make the health and safety of students and staff a top priority. As we continue to look at the academic and health crisis that caused the pandemic, I believe the proposed plan provides the first steps to bring our students and educators to the classroom. . “
The district has implemented an early warning system to help monitor student mental health and wellbeing. Using that system, students have received more than 4,300 virtual wellness checks and more than 1,400 personal wellness checks. Suicide protocols have started 30 times since March 2020, according to a report from the district.
The district report also outlined the pressure that long-term distance education has on academic students, stating that 90.4% of schools taught more F’s this year than the previous year and 77.2% of schools taught more D’s than last year. Of those who received an F during the fall semester, 11.2% earned all A’s and B’s in the fall of 2019.
As Covid-19 cases increase across the country, school districts face an impossible dilemma: to protect the mental health of students by returning to the classroom or the physical health by keeping them at home.
In October, a group of researchers warned of the mental health effects of Covid-19, predicting a second wave of problems such as more deaths from suicide and drug overdose.
However, some teachers in the US have died from the virus, which has led to pressure from some teachers to move to fully virtual classes.
In a paper published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noted that the kind of spread seen in busy offices and long-term care facilities has not been reported in schools.
School transmission has taken place, but the researchers said there is little evidence that it contributed in any meaningful way to increased community transmission.
Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) for assistance. There also is a crisis text line. Call 1-888-628-9454 for crisis support in Spanish.
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