Student Mental Health Opportunities

MCR, your countywide student government, is continuing its longstanding commitment to student mental health. At our last General Assembly, President Michael Yin led a discussion on mental health initiatives at high schools across the county. If you would like to talk to Michael and the other MCR officers about the many ideas shared by SGA Presidents and students across MCPS, please send an email to mcr.sga@gmail.com. MCR also has a number of other opportunities for students to advocate for reform in mental health training and policy, as follows:

#1 MCR Survey: To participate in a brief survey MCR is conducting, visit https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSegxbrTbru4Ry3hF5oERF2Am1_ele01qOTAUW1v71q7CpjQZA/viewform. This should only take a few minutes, and your thoughts will be communicated to county officials to affect potential policy change.

#2 MCR General Assemblies: MCR hosts monthly meetings at various high schools open to all students, in which discussions about all types of policy and advocacy occur. If you would like to meet with SGA Officers, students, and countywide professionals, such as Superintendent Smith or SMOB Matthew Post, this event is perfect for you. MCPS Officials often gather student data and information about topics, such as mental health, at these meetings, so the student voice has a lot of power at General Assemblies. Our annual combined general assembly with our middle school counterpart, MCJC will be on Wednesday, December 13th from 9:40 A.M. - 1:30 P.M. at Richard Montgomery High School. The link to register is https://goo.gl/forms/YoTjkaB4IjnBK3IW2. Please complete this no later than December 7th, and make sure to talk to your SGA advisor for more information. A paper permission slip, available at www.mcrsga.com/forms is also required.

#3 MCR Executive Board Meetings: MCR hosts monthly executive board meetings with a limited number of voting members, but all students are welcome to attend; please email mcr.sga@gmail.com if you are interested. Our next executive board meeting will be next Tuesday, December 5th, at Carver Educational Services Center Cafeteria (850 Hungerford Drive, Rockville, MD 20850) from 6:00 P.M. - 8:00 P.M.

#4 MASC Events (State SGA): The Maryland Association of Student Councils is hosting the following events:

The MASC Education Forum on December 9th from 9:30 AM to 3:00 PM will cover discussions over all types of education, from arts education to implicit bias to mental health. This discussion is open for all. The meeting is at Oxon Hill High School in PG County (6701 Leyte Drive, Oxon Hill, MD). You can register here until midnight December 6th: http://bit.ly/2BaWJ8G

The MASC Legislative Session is Saturday, February 3rd at St. Charles High School at Charles County (5305 Piney Church Rd, Waldorf, MD 20602). This session contains workshops that teach students how to advocate and make change at all levels of government, as well as the state SMOB election. Online registration will open on December 15th on www.mdstudentcouncils.org.

#5 Testifying Opportunities: A great way for MCPS staff to hear your student voice is by testifying to the Board of Education. MCR will be hosting a “Budget Blackout” when the 2018-2019 budget is being decided (early 2018), where all students are invited to testify for changes in the budget, such as funding for mental health programs. More information will be given out through our newsletter, which you can subscribe to at www.mcrsga.com/newsletter.

We hope you will join us in fighting for mental health reform, among many other policies, at some of the above events. For more information about MCR, we encourage you to visit www.mcrsga.com and subscribe to our newsletter. Thank you for representing the student voice by standing up for what you believe in at the county and statewide levels.

Sincerely,

MCR, Montgomery County Regional SGA