Are Idaho lawmakers really serious about preventing youth suicide? Apparently not

In one House committee hearing last month, we heard legislators so concerned about youth suicide rates and substance use that some of them were ready to allow facilities to treat teenagers without a license.

“It’s a crisis situation, and something needs to be done, and it needs to be done now,” Rep. John Vander Woude, R-Nampa, said during a hearing of the Health and Welfare Committee, his already-booming voice rising. “While we sit here and wait, there’s going to be more teenagers that commit suicide, that drop off or are not getting the treatment they need. While we sit here twiddling our thumbs, waiting for our bureaucracy to create a licensed program and with all the sideboards and everything else, we’re still going to be losing teenagers.”

Just down the hall less than two weeks later, legislators in another committee hearing were openly deriding state efforts to train teachers to help support students’ social-emotional well-being.

The dust-up happened Tuesday in the House Education Committee, when Superintendent of Public Instruction Sherri Ybarra and her staff were on hand to present an overview of the recommendation, issued last fall by Gov. Brad Little’s “Our Kids, Idaho’s Future” task force, according to Idaho Education News.

The task force backed the recommendation for $1 million that would go to training for teachers to help them identify at-risk students, intervene in a crisis and help address risky youth behaviors while creating a healthy classroom environment, and Little supports it.

Several legislators challenged the proposal.

“Let me start by saying I do not share your enthusiasm (for the social-emotional learning proposal),” Rep. Barbara Ehardt, R-Idaho Falls, told an Ybarra staffer, according to reporting by Clark Corbin of Idaho Education News. “What kind of disruptive behavior are we talking about?

She said teachers were spending more time with children “in an area ... that really is a role that should be dealt with in the home. It seems like everything is flipping.”

Rep. Tony Wisniewski, R-Post Falls, asked legislators to think back a generation or more, back to when legislators were in school, back to the 1960s, when things were different. There was respect then, he said, according to Idaho Education News.

Parents would “take us behind the woodshed, if necessary,” he said, comparing the social-emotional recommendation to the dystopian 1932 Aldous Huxley novel “Brave New World.”

Well, does Idaho have a serious problem that needs to be addressed or not?

Apparently, if a child is having emotional problems in school, the answer to some legislators is not to address it at the school, where children spend most of their day during the school year. The answer is either to ship them off to an unlicensed treatment facility or take the kid out behind the woodshed and give them a beating.

No wonder Idaho is in crisis.

Ybarra said professional educators have practically begged for additional support — since Idaho’s suicide rate ranks about fifth in the nation and the new Youth Risk Behavior Survey shows that 23% of students have expressed suicidal thoughts in the last year, the highest level in a decade.

“I just don’t know how you can say no to that,” Ybarra told Idaho Education News. “I just don’t know how you can consciously, in good faith represent the people of Idaho and say ‘Tired of being asked for money for programs.’ … We have mental health issues in the state of Idaho that need to be addressed. Period. End of discussion. Parents and teachers are asking for support.”

What parent would not prefer hearing from a teacher there might be a problem to be addressed to prevent a possible tragic outcome rather than visiting with the local undertaker about their child’s funeral?

Elected officials who walk out in the middle of public hearings because they do not want to listen to views different from their own do not deserve reelection to public office. Disagreement is part of the process. Not even listening should not be.

The sum of $1 million is a small price to pay to give teachers and counselors who are on the front lines of children’s well-being the tools they need to solve the problem.

Some of our legislators need to wake up from their 1960s dreamland and join the rest of us in confronting our reality in 2020.

This story was originally published February 12, 2020 at 8:38 AM.