Chalkbeat NY | “Five million will evaporate at the end of this week if the city doesn’t restore it in the final budget,” said Dawn Yuster, director of the School Justice Project at Advocates for Children. “They have already hired clinicians,” she added. “To rip them away from students and schools would be really devastating.”

Though the Mental Health Continuum has started small with about 50 schools in Brooklyn and the Bronx, advocates say the approach is promising. Participating schools receive training to help staff calm students who are in crisis and connect them to mobile crisis teams and mental health clinics, a partnership between the health and education departments as well as the city’s public hospital system.