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A Community Vision for Boston’s Students and FamiliesChapter 4: Health, Wellness and Healing

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Chapter Summary

Academic excellence requires creating safe learning environments that address the whole child. Over the last year, the pandemic has highlighted how necessary our schools are in providing essential services to students, from regular and nutritious meals to mental health services. The results of the Boston Youth Risk Behavior Surveys of middle and high school students indicate that many young people in Boston are struggling to find the support they need as they navigate the challenges in their lives.

We must do more to support students’ health, wellness, and healing, including helping them manage the intense transitions between remote and in-person learning and heal from the trauma of losing loved ones, experiencing community violence, and coping with the prolonged isolation of the pandemic.

  • Multilingual, culturally competent mental health care, with more trauma-informed specialists, a centralized directory of multilingual mental health staff, talent pipelines through partnerships with higher education institutions, support for equitable partnerships with nonprofit organizations, and support for the transition to adulthood.

  • Whole-child approach to mental health, safety, and autonomy by delivering racial justice, ending the criminalization of students, reforming student discipline practices, adopting ethnic studies and LGBTQ+ curricula, valuing student voices, and expanding access to arts, music, and sports programming.

  • Nutritious, culturally relevant food by implementing the Good Food Purchasing program in partnership with locally-owned food companies, celebrating diverse food cultures, and protecting families from food insecurity.