By Andrew Kuder / Broadcast version by Mary Schuermann reporting for the Kent State-Ohio News Connection Collaboration.

Over the past few years, mental health issues among teens in the U.S. have skyrocketed. According to the CDC, suicide rates among people ages 10-24 increased by 60% from 2007 to 2018.

Now, experts say the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated many of the issues that caused these trends.

"Now we've seen the effects of children who were isolated - especially those couple of years - having such a hard time adjusting now. And the social isolation, now coming back to school, the depression and anxiety is really increasing," said Karyn Kravetz, Associate Director of the Portage County Mental Health and Recovery Board.

In addition to a rise in depression and anxiety, this also had an impact on students' development. "A lot of the behaviors that are exhibited are exhibited because students are not in a good situation, either physical environment or mental health-wise," said Debbi Bailey, a consultant for one of Ohio's State Support Teams, which are groups of educators who help local school districts improve student experiences and outcomes.

With fewer options to interact with others, many children and teens turned to social media for communication. However, some experts believe that this increase in social media use without a proper school environment had a negative effect on the children's development.

"In our new age of technology and social media apps, being able to teach our students just some of those critical life skills is important," said Krista Allison, a consultant for the Stark County Educational Service Center.

Allison has seen firsthand how technology has changed the way students communicate with each other. "I remember being in a school once, and I was sitting there as the students were getting ready to get on a bus," she said, "And they were texting each other, but they weren't talking, and I remember asking and they said 'Oh yeah, we're talking to each other,' but they weren't communicating like we're communicating."

In a survey by the CDC, 14.9% of the interviewed students reported being electronically bullied, with female students more likely to experience it than male students.

However, that isn't to say that social media does not have its benefits; it can encourage users to be more open about their mental health.

"They see, say, maybe some famous people, some athletes, some other role models who have come out and talked about their struggles with mental illness," said Kravetz. "And that makes them not as embarrassed now to say that they have issues and they see a counselor."

The pandemic brought many changes to the American education system, the effects of which are still being felt two years later. From rising mental health issues in students to children experiencing delays in their social and emotional skills, parents and schools need to adapt to these changes and work harder to provide students with sufficient learning environments. This can apply to children as young as five years old.

"We know that early learning is really, really, a very critical time for children because it is the building of the foundation," said Bailey. "The first five years of a child's life are when they are absorbing the most and forming those attachments."

School attendance has also been an issue. According to the Ohio Department of Education, there was a 3% decrease in pre K-12 enrollment between fall 2019 and spring 2020, which is significantly higher than the 0.03-0.04% of the previous three years. In addition, the department says that chronic absenteeism has also been an issue.

"We're trying to help people to back up and look at: How can we support students in a way that they do want to come to the classroom...able to learn and function in the classroom in a healthy way?" said Bailey.

One way Ohio has worked to solve these issues through the use of Social and Emotional Learning (SEL), which is a set of standards for schools to measure how their students are developing. The standards were adopted by Ohio in June 2019.

Some ways Ohio has expanded SEL practices include reaching out to students on platforms like Twitter and providing documents for parents which highlight examples of how to improve their children's social, behavioral, and emotional health, according to a report from the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL).

One way Ohio has worked to solve these issues is through the use of State Support Teams. The goal of the State Support Teams is to work with schools across 16 regions in the state to improve the overall quality of students' education. This includes helping manage each school's meetings and checking students' progress in order to find which areas can be improved.

"We need to really be thinking about, 'How do we create an atmosphere where students can be supported at the education level [in the classroom]?'" said Bailey, who works on a State Support Team based in Canton.

This collaboration is produced in association with Media in the Public Interest and funded in part by the George Gund Foundation.


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With just over a month before Indiana university students return, a new law affecting college professor tenures is in full effect.

The law targets public universities, mandating diversity committees to review faculty, administration, and policies on "cultural and intellectual diversity."

Professors must undergo reviews every five years. Trustees are required to accept complaints if professors fail to meet criteria related to free inquiry, expression, and intellectual diversity, though specifics are not detailed.

Ball State University student Michaela Ayeh said the law promotes bigotry.

"This is a prime example of Board of Trustee and government overreach, restriction of academic freedom and censorship," said Ayeh. "This bill is exemplary of the racism, homophobia, sexism, classes of ableism and other bigoted ideologies that bigots harbor."

Proponents say the law gives the board the ability to determine whether faculty are eligible for tenure or promotion depending on their performance in promoting intellectual diversity every five years.

State Sen. Spencer Deery - R-West Lafayette - helped author the bill. He argued it addresses concerns of ideological bias in universities.

"Pew Research Foundation actually researched this of why do you lack trust in our institutions of higher education," said Deery. "The number one issue for Republican respondents was professors pushing political views irrelevant to the classroom."

Some scholars are concerned with how their speech will be restricted because their positions are now on the line.

Some of the pushback claims the law encourages conformity, and may discourage professors from engaging in topics that run the risk of violating what they deem is vague criteria.




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Montana has been granted $41 million to create a training and education program for new jobs in the high-tech sector.

The Headwaters Hub is part of a larger federal program designed to build the U.S. workforce in key areas, including artificial intelligence and photonics.

The U.S. Department of Commerce says Montana's rugged terrain, vast road system and largely rural setting make it the perfect place to train people in photonic remote-sensing systems, which use light to generate energy.

Headwaters Hub Executive Director Tim Van Reken said the focus will be on training people in Montana's new "innovation corridor" to learn the technology behind the systems.

"That runs from Bozeman and the Gallatin Valley, up through Butte up through Missoula and up into the Flathead through Kalispell," said Van Reken. "So, it is all of the metropolitan-micropolitan areas along that corridor, and all of the rural and tribal areas in between."

Van Reken said in addition to developing this cutting-edge technology, the Headwaters Hub could generate as many as ten-thousand jobs in Montana over a decade - and create new avenues of employment for the state's large Indigenous population.

The University of Montana, Montana State and Salish Kootenai College will be involved in the hub - but Van Reken said those won't be the only places students can learn, and most won't have to travel far to take classes.

"Montana is a big, distributed, wide-open space," said Van Reken. "We want to make sure that, as much as we can, we're having the training be close to home so that folks can get the training they need and prepare for jobs while still managing their day-to-day lives."

Nearly 200 applicants competed for funding for 31 tech hubs, which stretch across rural and urban areas in 32 states and Puerto Rico.

New Mexico teachers educating young people about climate change don't want them to feel hopeless - and they've developed an educational curriculum to match that outlook.

Fiana Shapiro, environmental education instructional coordinator for the Sandia Mountain Natural History Center, part of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science, said young people recognize that climate change is going to shape their futures - where they live, their vocation and quality of life. As part of the 350 New Mexico Climate Education Committee, Shapiro has helped develop Climate Hope, a middle-school climate curriculum.

"Most students know what it is, know some basics about it - they might know how it's connected to drought and even dryness," she said, "not necessarily a whole lot beyond that - but it really does depend on the school."

The 350 project has piloted the education curriculum in a handful of Albuquerque middle-school classrooms and held a recent teacher workshop to help them prepare lesson plans.

New Mexico has been hit by major forest fires followed by flooding this summer resulting in deaths, and the destruction of at least 500 homes.

In addition to adapting to a warming world, Shapiro said young people need climate education in order to develop green skills and understand what's needed to combat climate change - starting with reduction and eventual elimination of fossil fuels and including conservation of water and the thinning of forests. In order to engage, she believes kids need to know what's happening in New Mexico and around the world, "and that there are things that are being done already, and that can be done.

"We don't want to leave them with the idea of doom and gloom and everything's going wrong and that's it," she said. "We want to leave them with the idea that there are things that can be done and there's things they can do."

She said the four-lesson curriculum includes information about climate justice - the fact that people contributing the least to climate change are often the most affected.