A Colorado high school's suicide prevention and depression screening program traces its funding back to the Gates Foundation, raising conflict-of-interest questions for parents — and new federal rules may make programs like it harder to run.

• The school's paid suicide-prevention curriculum is run by a nonprofit that gets money through a giving foundation backed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which also invests in drug and biotech companies.
• The worry: screening teenagers for depression can funnel them toward antidepressants sold by companies the same donors profit from, and none of that funding trail was disclosed to parents.
• New Department of Education guidance issued in late August says schools must get written parental consent before surveying students about mental health — an opt-out notice is no longer enough, and schools that ignore it risk losing federal money.
• The evidence the school offered to defend the program leaned on studies from 2007 and 2014, even though teen suicide rates have risen since.
• There is also a contagion risk: after one suicide at the school, classmates trained to spot warning signs blamed themselves and a cluster of distress followed.

Outlook: Expect more parents to demand opt-in consent and funding disclosures from school districts, and expect districts to quietly rewrite their permission forms to stay eligible for federal funding.