Reading Between the Budget Lines: Funding For Social Emotional Learning Programs

I pay just as much attention to what schools refuse to fund as to what they choose to spend money on. It is paramount to understand this before we make the argument that more money will result in inclusion. I don’t believe that to be the case, because the therapeutic model has become a money-making industry and social emotional learning programs are one of its most profitable products.

Schools are no longer just places of learning. Increasingly, they have become sites for what can only be described as a deficit-based diagnostic and therapeutic industry. Instead of seeing children as whole people with rights, identities, and strengths, students are framed through what they “lack,” what can be “fixed,” and what can be measured against standardized norms.

This approach has created a booming market. Therapy has become less about supporting children in authentic, relational ways and more about products, programs, packaged interventions, pre-made toolkits, and commercialized “fixes.” The needs of children are reduced to checklists that can be matched to a service or a subscription, fueling an industry that profits from the idea that students are broken and must be normalized. In other words, companies have learned to turn children’s struggles into a marketable product. And every dollar spent here is a dollar not spent on real, sustained support.

What gets lost in this market model is humanity. Students are not problems to be solved. They are individuals whose challenges often stem from environments and systems unwilling to adapt. Yet the therapeutic marketplace thrives on positioning difference as deficiency, convincing schools that salvation lies in buying the next new product.

We must ask: who benefits from this cycle? Certainly not the children being pathologized. Certainly not the families who are told that belonging is conditional on intervention. The beneficiaries are those who capitalize on deficit thinking and sell solutions that keep the system unchanged.

Real change in education means refusing to let schools be colonized by markets of diagnosis and therapy. It means shifting from a deficit lens to one that honours children as they are, challenges systemic barriers, and invests in relationships rather than products.

Parents should be asking the hard questions. Why is there always “no money” for more teachers, smaller classes, or meaningful accommodations, but somehow there is money for glossy social emotional learning programs? Most of these programs come with either a large price tag to purchase lessons packaged in binders or an ongoing subscription fee that keeps schools tied to the product. When schools tell parents there is no money to support their child while purchasing these programs, they are not being transparent. That is not a funding problem, it is a decision about priorities. Why are schools buying into a marketplace of pre-packaged “wellness” curricula that promise to standardize feelings, manage behaviour, and fix children, while ignoring the relational work that actually builds belonging? Social emotional learning has become another lucrative business of “fixing” kids, dressed up as support. But wellness isn’t something you can buy in a binder, it is something we create together through connection, respect, and care.

And let’s be clear: most of these programs aren’t new. They mirror the same behaviourist tools schools already rely on, prize charts, token economies, sticker systems, just rebranded with softer language and shinier packaging. At their core, they still treat children as objects to be managed, incentivized, or normalized, rather than as people whose voices and experiences matter. When we call this “support,” we fail to see that it is simply the same old control, sold back to us at a higher price.

For neurodivergent students especially, this commodification of emotions is deeply harmful. They are most often the ones targeted by these programs, told they must mask, comply, or regulate according to a standardized script. Their natural ways of being are pathologized, their identities reduced to skill deficits, and their authentic voices silenced under the weight of “interventions.” Instead of listening to neurodivergent children and changing the environment around them, schools buy programs that demand conformity. The result is not inclusion, it is erasure, packaged and sold as progress.

What if, instead of funding lesson plans and worksheets, schools invested in counsellors, inclusive teacher training, or supports designed for neurodivergent students? What if we stopped pouring money into teaching kids to act more “normal” and started building communities that accept them as they are? Every purchase is a choice. And when schools buy into the business of fixing kids, they’re saying: we would rather spend thousands teaching children to mask than spend those dollars on helping them belong.

Parents must not accept this without question. Ask your schools what programs they are purchasing and how much is being spent. 

Because until we confront the way SEL programs have replaced real investment in teachers, classrooms, and authentic supports, inclusion will remain nothing more than a purchase order.

Push for transparency about where money is going and who benefits. 

Demand to know why there is always funding for programs but not for people. 

Your voice matters, and it is only by asking these questions that we can begin to shift the system toward true inclusion.