Enacts the student suicide prevention act; requires the governing board or body of every local educational agency serving students in grades seven to twelve, to adopt policies, procedures and guidelines on student suicide prevention, intervention and postvention for students in such grades.
This bill enacts the “Student Suicide Prevention Act” and creates a new article in the Education Law requiring school systems serving grades 7 through 12 to adopt comprehensive policies, procedures, and guidelines on suicide prevention, intervention, and postvention. It directs schools to address warning signs, risk and protective factors, referral pathways, crisis response, parent notification, mental health assessment, re-entry support after a crisis, and support after a suicide attempt or death. The bill also requires the State Education Department to develop model policies and an annually updated statewide resource guide of mental health and suicide prevention services.
The bill also expands existing school safety and anti-harassment provisions. It amends the Dignity for All Students Act to add and define concepts such as bullying, coercive control, and gaslighting, broaden coverage to electronic communication and school functions, and require schools to include suicide-risk recognition in staff training. It further requires updated reporting on harassment, bullying, discrimination, suicide incidents, and related school climate data, and it extends related obligations to public, private, and charter schools. The bill takes effect July 1, 2027.
The bill would significantly expand the duties of local educational agencies, especially middle and high schools, by mandating formal suicide-prevention frameworks, staff training, community partnerships, and periodic policy review. It would also amend multiple sections of the Education Law to broaden anti-bullying and anti-discrimination rules, require additional reporting and data collection, and add coach-specific conduct standards and training requirements for certain education professionals. Affected parties include school districts, BOCES, charter schools, private schools, school employees, coaches, students, parents, and the State Education Department.
No committee transcript or recorded vote information was provided, so there is no direct evidence of debate or formal support/opposition in the materials supplied. Based on the bill text alone, the measure appears to be framed as a student safety and mental health initiative with a strong preventative focus, and it is presented in a generally protective and remedial tone. The inclusion of model policies, statewide resources, and training requirements suggests an intent to standardize school responses rather than leave implementation entirely to local discretion.
The most notable areas of potential contention are the bill’s breadth and administrative burden, including mandatory policy adoption, reporting, training, surveys, and periodic updates for a wide range of schools and personnel. Another likely point of debate is the expansion of definitions and obligations to include coercive control, gaslighting, cyberbullying, and off-campus electronic conduct, which may raise questions about scope, enforcement, and overlap with existing discipline and free-speech concerns. The bill also specifies that schools, not law enforcement, remain primarily responsible for student behavior responses, and it requires clinically trained mental health professionals to make hospital-transport determinations whenever practicable, which could be a point of operational concern for districts with limited staffing.