House Education and Labor Committee Considers School Infrastructure, Mental Health Legislation and CEC-Endorsed RISE Act

This week, the House Education and Labor Committee held a hearing to consider five bills, including the Rebuild America’s Schools Act and three mental health-related bills. The Rebuild America’s Schools Act would invest in school infrastructure projects to ensure safe, healthy, and energy efficient facilities. A suite of mental health bills included H.R. 7780, the Mental Health Matters Act, which combines various smaller pieces of legislation into a more comprehensive package. This legislation responds to the growing mental health crisis experienced by PreK-12 students, college students, and educators and school staff across the nation. The bill strengthens school-based behavioral health services and ensures that workers and families have access to mental health and substance use disorder benefits. It addresses the critical shortage of professionals in schools through provisions to incentivize recruitment and retention of school-based mental-health-services providers at high-need K-12 schools. 

H.R. 7780 includes the CEC-endorsed Respond, Innovate, Succeed, and Empower (RISE) Act of 2021. This bill requires colleges to accommodate incoming students with existing disability documentation and expands the accepted types of documentation. For example, a student with an individualized education program would be able to present that documentation to an institution of higher education rather than going through a new documentation process to demonstrate a disability. The RISE Act also makes the accommodation process more transparent and trains college faculty on how to meet the needs of students with disabilities.  The suite of bills considered this week will now need to be considered on the House floor and in the Senate. 

Read more here.