Photo: Caroline Silber for Strategies for Children

California is trying to lower the number of preschool expulsions by giving these programs a way to fund more access to mental health services. As Education Week reports, this is the result of a new state law that was enacted last month.

Specifically, the law increases the reimbursement rate by 5 percent for each low-income child, age 0 to 5, who receive services. As Education Week explains, “…if a classroom has 20 children and 10 of them are subsidized, the program would be reimbursed at a rate of 10.5 children.”

This law builds on a 2017 California law that makes it harder for preschool programs that receive state funding to expel students.

On the website State of Reform, Sarah Neville-Morgan, the director of the Early Education and Support Division at the California Department of Education, says “Expulsion works against everything that is best practice for children, families and child care programs. This law creates the support system necessary to keep young children in preschool and child care facilities.”

Walter Gilliam, a Yale University professor of psychiatry, tells Education Week that California is “creating a funding mechanism that financially incentivizes programs to want to have a consultant.” In 2016, Gilliam released a research brief on how teacher’s biases could lead to expulsions.

Preventing preschool expulsions is vital work. As we’ve blogged before, these expulsions are common. This can be because children who live with severe trauma — such as homelessness, abuse, and neglect — can act out in school.

Expulsions take a toll. NAEYC (the National Association for the Education of Young Children) points out that “Over a decade of research and data tell us that the policies and practices of suspension and expulsion in early childhood, which disproportionately affect children of color, are causing harm to children and families.”

Some states have had success lowering expulsions rates. Education Week notes:

“Gilliam and a team of researchers worked in Connecticut to conduct the first statewide randomized controlled trial on the impact of providing mental health consultation services to early-childhood education providers. He says in just three months challenging behaviors were significantly reduced.

“Through this model, a mental health consultant who’s trained in early-childhood development and trauma observes classes and helps teachers come up with strategies to assist students engaging in inappropriate behavior.”

Gilliam tells Education Week that mental health consultants provide “a live person in the classroom who can coach that teacher on more effective ways of working with the children, right in the moment as it’s needed with just-in-time consultation, which is the best kind of way to provide support to people who are highly busy and overburdened.”

Supporting teachers is a crucial way to keep students in school. Gilliam says teachers “didn’t get into this job because they wanted to give up on babies, but they have to because we keep putting them in that position by giving them lots of children with lots of needs and then not giving them the support that they need in order to be successful.”