“Coming from a charter school where we only had a behavioral counselor, if you weren’t a ‘bad’ student you had no one to talk to,” said a D.C. high school student who asked to not be named. “The reason I’m acting the way I am is because I’m getting physically abused at home, or I go home and don’t eat, or I walk home by myself and no one is home to take care of me.

“School doesn’t support mental health the way it should and the statistics of attempted suicides made by kids between 3rd-12th grade proves that,” he added.