SEATTLE — The Seattle City Council voted to fund programs that support “student mental health” with $12.5 million during Tuesday’s council meeting.
Last week, a vote on this issue was tied. Advocates of its passage say it’s $7.5 million short of what they were promised.
This effort to fund student mental health started as a rallying cry after shootings at Ingram High School in Seattle in 2022. Students thought they had scored a win when the council allocated $20 million, in the form of legislation, for this effort. But this month they learned that funding was in question as only $10 million of the $20 million promised were listed on the cities supplemental budget.
"We all know that we have a huge budget crisis in front of us and we're going to have to have some hard conversations starting next month about how we address that challenge,” said Councilmember Tammy Morales during Tuesday’s meeting.
“Taking the money that was promised to this group of people and these community members to solve that problem is not fair and it's not just and frankly it’s not going to solve the problems that we have all been talking about for the last few days," Morales continued.
Councilmember Rob Saka admonished his colleagues, saying this promise was broken due to the lack of “foresight and planning” on behalf of the council adding the city has “not lived up to that commitment.”
High School student Leo Falit-Baiamonte attended Tuesday’s council meeting. Falit-Baimonte serves on the Seattle Student Union.
"We have a city, now, of very upset people. And they're going to see what changes happen. They funded the Seattle Police Department budget ... we can see here what there priorities are. There priorities are big business and the police, not students and their actual needs," he said.