Each weekday morning, students in St. Paul Public Schools gather with their classmates for a daily meeting. It’s a critical touchpoint for mental well-being, said Juli Montgomery-Riess, the district’s lead middle school counselor. So when district leaders decided to offer an online option for families threatened by Operation Metro Surge, they made sure that online learners could still participate.
“There is the uncertainty of what is happening in the community,” Montgomery-Riess said. “But there is the anchor of, ‘Today I am going to log into my morning meeting at 9. I am going to meet with my class and I am still going to have the normalcy, despite everything else.’”
For thousands of Minnesota kids, daily consistency has been upended. For some, family members have been detained or deported. For others, parents fear leaving home. Social media has provided a near-constant stream of violent images and videos, and friends are missing from school.
A daily morning meeting with classmates can’t solve everything, but it can be a “protective factor,” Montgomery-Riess said – a consistent practice that can offset the negative impact of stress. It’s one example of countless efforts in recent weeks by children’s mental health professionals to care for kids amid the deep fear and anxiety brought on by the amped up presence of federal law enforcement.
‘I am so angry that this is happening to them.’
Persistent fear, anxiety or stress over a prolonged period of time interfere with kids’ ability to regulate their social-emotional skills, said Kathy Lombardi Kimani, director of St. Paul Public Schools’ office of school support. “It impacts children’s learning, even their physical well-being. It keeps the brain in that constant fight-or-flight mode.”
No one thrives amid fear and uncertainty, Kimani said, but it can be especially difficult for kids because they often lack the language to talk about it. “And not having the language can make things even worse.”
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In March 2020, when the world was forced into pandemic lockdown, children nationwide reported increased rates of depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation. But recent studies of students’ mental health, including the 2025 Minnesota State Student Survey, showed signs of a rebound.
Montgomery-Riess worries that ongoing threats posed by Operation Metro Surge may cause many of those gains to be lost.
“We’ve spent hours and hours doing assessments, connecting with kids, getting them connected to outside treatment, keeping them safe and alive,” she said. But the current unrest has changed everything, she said. “As someone who cares about kids and their outcomes, I am so angry that this is happening to them.”
While children from immigrant families face a direct threat from Operation Metro Surge, all kids are feeling the pain of recent events, Montgomery-Riess said.
“There is not a single student who is not impacted by this,” she said, adding that more than 20% of SPPS students – about 7,500 kids – have chosen the online learning option, leaving classrooms full of empty seats. “The schools are divided. The learning environment is divided. Students are missing their friends,” she said.
Of the families that have selected the online learning option, Kimani said a disproportionate number are immigrants and people of color. Pulling a kid from school to learn online can have a negative impact on their educational progress, she added, further widening racial gaps in academic achievement that already exist. “It is a situation that has to be acknowledged,” she said.
Parents seeking support
Staff at NAMI Minnesota, a nonprofit aimed at improving the lives of children and adults with mental illnesses and their families, have reported an uptick in recent weeks to calls to their parent support hotline.
“We are seeing a lot of isolation in some communities where people are afraid of going out,” said Angela Moore Smith, director of outreach and engagement. “For kids, this reality can be particularly distressing.”
In NAMI’s peer-led BIPOC support groups, participants are sharing feelings of “terror, overwhelm, anxiety,” said Greta Kjos, director of children’s programming. “They are experiencing barriers to accessing health care, to mental health care or to medication.”
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And in group homes for people with emotional disabilities, maintaining legal staffing levels — a perennial issue — has become even more difficult. “Group homes are having difficulty with staff taking leaves because they don’t feel safe in this environment,” Kjos said.
‘One student, one family at a time’
As widespread feelings of anxiety spread to children, mental health professionals say they’re focused on consistency and care in all of their interactions.
“We are trying to provide a safe environment for students [so they can] continue learning as students have a right to do,” said Abbey Pierce, president-elect of the Minnesota School Social Workers Association and a social worker in the Spring Lake Park Public School District. The message to families, she said, is clear: “We are with you. We appreciate you. We want you here. One student, one family at a time is all we can do. And right now we’re just doing it over and over again.”
In St. Paul as in many other districts, the superintendent sent a letter to families with resources to support children during difficult times. The resources included age-appropriate guidelines for talking about current events, as well as advice to help kids share their feelings and ask questions. School social workers and counselors are also offering virtual counseling sessions for students and families on a drop-in or appointment basis.
Though the way out of the current unrest feels long and difficult, Pierce and her colleagues are leaning into kids’ natural resilience and sharing stories of people from all corners of the state rallying behind kids and families, working toward the day when students can learn together again.
“It feels strange to feel hopeful in a time where there is so much that is overwhelming and dark,” Pierce said. “But I do think that the state of Minnesota and the community care we’ve been seeing here — people stepping up, and doing the right thing and caring for others — really signifies the resilience of this state.” When normalcy has been turned upside down, she said, “it’s important for kids to be reminded of that.”
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