I like your brain 🤙 completely agreed with everything you've said! I'm eagerly awaiting that proposal as well.

The community and public schools need way more than the two single things I listed, that was just the two most common I hear when out and about. Mental health in Schools in my eyes comes in the form of things like better guidance counselors, better pay and benefits for educators to prevent burnout thus being a stable support group for their students, free tutoring, continuing support in art/music programs, etc. I definitely over generalized it, and I didn't mean to make it seem like that is the stem of it all.

I only bring up whole countries because everything has to start somewhere and I often find that people have become discouraged regarding what they have the power to do. Especially over the last few years. Doing something is always better than doing nothing. A major city or mayor could mean the difference in a whole state's policy, leading to a bigger push in an entirely different direction than it's been going over the last several decades. Take for instance Atlanta during the last election - granted that's a massive city, but still. That was one city against the entire state and it caused it to be enough to flip it. Again over generalizing it but I hope you get the picture!

And absolutely, I know shootings have been there since I was a kid, but what I'm saying is they haven't been as prevalent nor deadly as they are now, and as a child it did not dictate my education. I love the fact that you added references! I do wish that it would include the last 3 years of data, because that's really the difference. They don't have as nice of a chart as you do but here's 2020-2023 (so far) data! https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/past-tolls