ELPS Board Begrudgingly Passes State-Mandated Provision to Receive Mental Health Funding
State funding that pays for mental health and safety services in Michigan schools now has unprecedented strings attached. To receive student mental health funding for the 2025-2026 school year, schools must waive attorney-client privilege if a district experiences a “mass casualty event.”
At its Monday meeting, the East Lansing school board voted 5-1 to change its policies to comply with the state law.
East Lansing Info spoke with Board President Chris Martin after the meeting to learn about the new requirement. Martin, who works as an attorney, could not hide his disdain for the policy during the meeting.
“The incentives are misaligned, because you fund these mental health supports to prevent that kind of thing from happening,” Martin said. “If you say no [to the new rules] but keep your attorney-client privilege, in some ways it would increase the likelihood that you wouldn’t have the supports in place, which could increase the chances of something bad happening. So, they create this terrible choice.”
The requirement of waiving attorney-client privilege presents “legal and constitutional questions,” Martin added.
He said he believes the new rules stem from the aftermath of shootings at Oxford High School and Michigan State University, saying lawyers for those institutions and insurance companies hindered investigations by the Attorney General’s office.
Compounding the board’s frustration, he said, was the six-month delay in the state finalizing its budget. After the budget was approved in October, school districts were given a short timeline to comply with the new laws by the end of November.
Before arriving at the decision, the board met in closed session with district legal counsel to discuss options.
Trustee Terah Chambers was the lone vote against accepting the funding under the new rules.
In other business, the board held a public hearing about changes to district health education. ELPS Sex Education Supervisor Anne Scott told the board that each Michigan school district is required to provide HIV education, while additional sexual health education is optional. East Lansing has elected to include the sexual health education.
Scott said the district’s Sex Education Advisory Board recommends switching to new curriculum for sex education called Rights, Respect, and Responsibility.
“The content covers things like consent boundaries, anatomy, healthy relationships, [and] all the STI, HIV, [and] pregnancy prevention core concepts we would expect,” Scott said, adding the new curriculum is interactive and focused on skill development.
The public can weigh in on the curriculum at the board’s Dec. 8 meeting.
Also at the meeting, ELPS Superintendent Dori Leyko highlighted an initiative to expand on the weekend survival kits students take home to supplement weekend meals.
“We’re going to do Thanksgiving week survival kits to distribute to families during this extended time away from school,” Leyko said, acknowledging that many of the district’s students rely on school meals.
She said the kits will focus on items students can prepare themselves, like cereal cups with milk, oatmeal cups, lunch items and snacks. The district is collecting items and funds for the initiative through Monday, Nov. 17.
Update 11/12: A previous version of this article included the incorrect table showing sex ed curriculum by grade level.