In 2008 then Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law SB 1378 CH 143 known as the Jason Flatt Act of 2008.

This law states - that a school district that receives a development block grant may extend a portion of those funds to provide to each of its teachers two hours of training in the prevention of youth suicide. The training provided pursuant to this section shall not exceed two hours, and may occur during a regularly scheduled in-service training day.

To me and anyone else that has lost a child to suicide this is not acceptable. A total of 16 states have passed the Jason Flatt Act. However California is one of 2 that did not mandate this training be provided and taken just that it be provided pursuant to money available for the school district.

My goal along with your help is to influence local legislation to introduce and pass an amendment to this law to mandate not only that training be available but mandatory that all teachers in CA take this 2 hour block training yearly.

I have already reached out to my local representatives to assist in this matter but unfortunately I am getting little to no response even though youth suicide has increased 128% in children 10-14 since 2013.

I feel if I can gather enough support via signatures and present this along with other facts and statistics to these representatives we can open some eyes and in turn prevent other families from feeling our pain.

Please sign and pass along this petition to everyone you know. We together have the power to make a change. 1 more life lost to something as preventable as youth suicide is 1 too many.

Josh Anderson

Co-Founder of JJ's Hello Foundation

visit us at

hellofund.org

for more information.