JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Nearly 5,000 Florida students were Baker Acted at school in 2021 according to a new report released by the state.
The report is the first of its kind.
A state law passed last year created the requirement for districts to report the number of Baker Acts that occur on school grounds, buses, and school-sponsored events.
It also requires districts to report the number of individual students Baker Acted.
It’s our first glimpse into how commonly this drastic measure is used in Florida schools.
We spoke with Franchon Baker-Bellamy in May.
Her daughter had recently been pulled out of school, put in the back of a police cruiser in handcuffs and taken to the mental health facility after expressing to a school official she’d been having suicidal thoughts.
“We’ll never forget it. It’s traumatic, you know, with your child being locked up for 72 hours and you can’t get to them,” said Baker-Bellamy.
The Baker Act allows law enforcement to involuntarily commit a person to a mental health facility for up to 72 hours if they’re deemed to pose an immediate threat to themselves or others.
Franchon’s daughter isn’t alone.
A new state report shows more than 5,000 Baker Acts were carried out in Florida schools on more than 4,800 individual students in 2021 alone.
In Northeast Florida, Duval schools saw a total of 137 Baker Acts, St. Johns 46, Clay 42 and Nassau 30.
All but Nassau had a lower Baker Act rate than the state.
But Melanie Brown-Woofter with the Florida Behavioral Health Association said because this is the first report of its kind, it’s hard to glean much from the data, but the stats will be invaluable going forward.
“So that we can make improvements to the system of care based on data,” said Brown-Woofter.
Andrew Spar, President of the Florida Education Association, agreed it’s not possible to rate how the state is doing based on a single year’s data, but there are other stats that show the state could be doing more to address student mental health on the front end.
“One school counselor to seven or eight hundred students. The national recommendation is one to 300,” said Spar.
There is a desire on the part of education and mental health professionals to get even more detailed data moving forward, like a grade level breakdown of Baker Acted students.
The goal is to ensure the Baker Act is used as an option of last resort, as it was originally intended.
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