In the aftermath of the Parkland school shooting, Florida lawmakers vowed to push harder on an issue they acknowledged they had failed: mental health in schools. Sen. Kathleen Passidomo, R-Naples, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, filed a mental health pilot program in schools early this year, which sets aside $40 million to connect students to community programs for mental health treatment and trains teachers to identify students who are “at risk of having mental illness.” Yet when asked about her own bill in its current form, she was blunt: “It’s not enough.”
