Ed Department Downsizes Office of Safe & Drug-Free Schools

by jglear

06/23/2011 2:07 PM

As Yogi Berra said, “It’s déjà vu all over again.” For the past several months, we’ve been bemoaning the elimination of CDC’s Division of Adolescent and School Health (DASH). To refresh your memory, back in the spring, CDC announced that it was removing the HIV work from DASH and re-grouping the non-HIV-related school health programs into a “division that includes other chronic disease prevention programs.”

This week brought news that the Department of Education's Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools (OSDFS) is also being restructured. According to a Dear Colleague letter released from the Deputy Secretary of Education, the moves are prompted by the 29% cut in the Office’s budget agreed by Congress on April 14. Similar to the DASH changes, the OSDFS will be demoted as an administrative entity -- becoming an Office for Safe and Healthy Students within the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education. To track federal education programs and funding, I like Michele McNeil who first put me on to this story.

Seems to me that these changes don’t bode well for programs such as Healthy Schools, Healthy Students and Safe & Drug-Free School that have supported valuable school-based mental and emotional health services. What's your thinking on these changes?