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Texas Mental Health Multi-Tiered Systems of Support Becomes the LAW.

By Alice Linahan 9.5.2019

On Sept. 3rd I was honored to be asked to speak at a Concerned Women for America (CWA) meeting in Bridgeport, Texas- to discuss the mental health legislation passed in Texas, in the last legislative session. Below is a video of my talk, where I laid out the history of Education Reform, away from knowledge-based academics, to the behavioral. Below the video, in this post, I will prove psychological evaluations have already been piloted and has been happening in Texas, without parental consent. And, how NOW, through the passage of a combination of legislation, has been codified, into law.

I believe it is important to know the terms being used to implement access to students for psychological evaluations. 

1. Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS)
As defined in the State Board of Education (SBOE)’s #2 recommendation for their Long Range Plan (LRP) for public education, which can be found here. 
Recommendation #2: TEA and the legislature financially incentivize an integrated and data-driven academic and nonacademic multitiered system of support (MTSS) on every campus to identify and connect
ALL STUDENTS with appropriate support services, including supports for behavioral health, mental health, and intrapersonal and interpersonal effectiveness (see the Texas Model for
 
Texas Model for Comprehensive School Counseling Programs 
Intrapersonal Effectiveness ■ Positive student self-concept ■ Effective executive functioning skills ■ Appropriate behavior to the situation and environment Interpersonal Effectiveness ■ Effective interactions with diverse populations ■ Effective and appropriate communication skills ■ Recognition of personal boundaries, individual rights, and privacy needs of others ■ Effective conflict resolution skills ■ Development of healthy relationships
 

Question: Who decides what “Healthy Relationships” means?  

2. Texas’ House Bill (HB) 3 was the primary bill that turned Long-Range Plan recommendations into law. As seen here on the TEA website, here is what HB 3 put into law. 

Student Empowerment and Engagement
As a way to empower students, the Long-Range Plan recommended financially incentivizing an integrated and data-drive academic and nonacademic multitiered system of support (MTSS) on every campus to identify and connect ALL STUDENTS with appropriate support services, including supports for behavioral health, mental health, and intrapersonal and interpersonal effectiveness.
HB 18 and HB 19 by Rep. Four Price, R-Amarillo, address this issue. HB 18 requires mental health training for certain school employees. It adds curriculum requirements, counseling programs, educational programs, state and regional programs and services, and health care services for students.
HB 19 requires the Local Mental Health Authority (LMHA) to employ a non-physician mental health professional to serve as a mental health and substance use resource for districts. The mental health professional will be housed at an education service center and will help implement mental health initiatives and help raise awareness among district employees about mental health and substance abuse issues. 
This video will help you understand Multi-Tiered Systems of Support:

Please take the time to listen below to testimony by a Texas Counselor, who describes what SB 11 will allow if passed.

Texas Sen. Bob Hall asks the right questions, exposing how they have the ability, through Social and Emotional Learning (SEL), to identify students needing those Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS); WITHOUT PARENTAL CONSENT. 

Below is a letter that parents received from Canyon Ridge MS in Leander ISD, letting parents know their 7th grader was diagnosed as needing PYSCHO-SOCIAL intervention according to her STAAR scores.

According to the parents, the child had all A’s, never failed a STAAR test, never in trouble, in athletics, and tons of friends. She was assigned an adult mentor, met with her mentor, and all of her teachers informed of her psycho-social status prior to this letter being sent to parents or for parents consent to be requested.

The parents then contacted their other children’s schools and their other child at LWBE was also labeled as needing psycho-social invention. He had never failed a STAAR test either but somehow the STAAR results determined his psychological needs. Unlike CRMS, Laura Bush Elementary would have never contacted them about his labeling. They only knew to ask since they received the letter from middle school.

The district had contracted with a third party called INOVA, as seen here.
 LISD paid over $21,200 for this non-scientifically proven program.
A child’s personal identifier sometimes referred to a name, has been replaced with a color: green, blue, yellow or red. From henceforth all decisions on academics and behavior (specifically psycho-social behavior) will be based on the child’s color designation.  LISD has installed “mentors” at each school to check in periodically with the child to give them the self-esteem that INOVA decided they are lacking.
As stated in a letter addressed to elected officials seen here, which was ignored…
“We are witnessing today what could be described as the grandest expansion of the Nanny State in the history of America. We believe this expansion to be one of the most diabolical, intricate, and subversive schemes to plague the landscape of American public policy toward Socialism.

This atrocity is “The Medicalization of Our Schools.”

A view from the classroom of today would astound onlookers that mental health and social, emotional, and behavioral interventions have replaced academics. With these wrap-around mental health services and interventions into personalities, values, beliefs, and dispositions at school, teachers are expected and forced to monitor and collect personal behavioral data on our children that has nothing to do with education. Data is collected, logged into state longitudinal data systems, shared, and ultimately, exposes our children to ‘surveillance capitalism.’ This personal data is freely given and used by outside contractors, foundations, and businesses to create software, curricula, activities, and programs that delve into changing the personal qualities of children and their families according to a government set of objectives.

Schools represent a “captive audience” and as such, prime targets for social policy change.

From a purely educational viewpoint, this could be termed “The Destruction of the American Educational System.”

From a health care perspective, this could be viewed as “The Subversion of the
World’s Finest System of Health Care.”

From a societal vantage point, this could be described as “The Subduing of the
American Family.”

However, because of the integration of business and labor, this could also just as accurately be dubbed, “The Collectivization of American Capitalism.”

Analyzed from a public policy perspective, it could be called “The Demise of
Representative Government.”

All of these titles would be accurate because each of them describes different appendages of the same program. What is involved in the “Medicalization of Our Schools?”

Below is a link to the Power-Point Presentation I referenced in my talk at the CWA meeting above.
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