California schools…. Why do we need school psychologist? Where I went to school the district would just pay a psychologist from a local hospital for an hour if teachers/counselors felt a student needed to be seen. It’s interesting how CA schools hire on several school psych full time. Waste of district money…

We are in a pretty substantial mental health crisis now. And the “back in my day” rhetoric is pretty tired. My grandfather talked about going to the outhouse in “his day”. You don’t like indoor plumbing? Of course we do things now that we didn’t used to do. We know more things now.

We have 2 psychologists full time in our Special education dept that do evaluations for our SPED students, as well as evaluate gen ed students to see if they qualify for special education services. They do not do counseling. School counselors, a social worker, and intervention team do that.

You’re right Illinois. But maybe they wouldn’t be dealing with all of these new problems if their world hadn’t been upended.

They wouldn’t need sexual health support and services if the culture hadn’t been inundated with porn, transmaoism, and the sexual revolution.

They wouldn’t need spiritual health support and services if the church hadn’t been undermined and attacked for generations.

They wouldn’t need emotional health support and services if the family unit hadn’t been destroyed or singleness incentivized with entitlements robbing families of fathers.

They wouldn’t need mental health support a services if screens hadn’t replaced FaceTime and schools continued previous emphasis on positive play and recess time when younger.

They wouldn’t need physical health support and services if we hadn’t enhanced food for chemicals and stuck them in poorly lit and poorly ventilated cages for hours on end with little to do, or overemphasized allopathy, endlessly jabbing them with chemicals while ignoring other fields of medicine such as osteopathy and homeopathy.

But if you think schools can make up for all of that, you have a confidence in the public school system that I can’t match.

I would feel better about it if the average school in America wasn’t failing its community in the basics of education now. So until education is mastered, I say let the more specialized jobs be done by the specialists in the community and let the school specialize in education and try to get that right for the first time in awhile.

There’s a school of thought that schools are supposed to supply all of the needs of the children. Taken to its logical conclusion, this takes the idea of “loco parentis” and inverts the roles of parent and school.

I am very much against this line of thinking. But I have even more reasons why I disagree with schools supplying medical information, counseling services, mental health services, spiritual support, gender counseling, sports training, food services, etc.

Putting schools in this position socializes these markets more than I’m comfortable with. Competition and the push to innovate is severely hampered, and as we can see from the news, there is reduced accountability in the schools than in private business in terms of safety and security for students.

Also, school personnel are generally undertrained and unprepared in comparison to their private industry counterparts. So you end up with a pale comparison to the private industry, but at least the price is right. I struggle to find a single one of these services that is comparably staffed with even adequate equivalents. And that because schools are built and designed to focus on education, not all of the extra stuff that we have gradually added onto them.

I await the cries from the peanut gallery. The usual argument is to compare the best services provided at a school against the worst equivalent in private industry, instead of comparing best to best or average to average.

Wow people thinking school psychs do counseling in schools? Tell me you aren’t really an educator without telling me. Our school psych does evaluations and is our 504 chair. She’s our only one in district (small district) and she’s busier than anyone I know. Her day consists of evaluating students for IEPs and chairing 504 meetings. She doesn’t do any counseling - that’s for our social workers. I’m so glad my school has one in house. I know it would be way more expensive to hire out when needed, which would be every single day and most of the summer.

Maryland HS it is not tired rhetoric of back in my day. I embrace and talk about to my students what my grandfather had to deal with being born in 1910 and only having an 8th grade education and being a farmer and dealing without OSHA being in the mix. He died because of that not being a "thing" back in his day. He lived to be 90 (prob could have lived into 100+) and oh what did he see, especially being 1st generation American. My mom is a boomer and what she had to deal with along with my Vietnam veteran father matters. IF we are in a mental health crisis it is of their own generation making. Sometimes pulling up your britches is a way to deal and learn coping skills and go through adversity. It is what my generation and the ones before did, learned to cope. We are over medicating and over diagnosing these kids. No I am not saying that ALL of them do not have issue but I would say half of the IEP's in our school are useless or should have never been implemented. You take away from students that actually do need the help. I think that a lot of them just need a 504 which follows them to College if they decide to go that route. Do not denigrate any generation that came before. They had their own "mental health" issues to deal with.

Bring corporal punishment back. How about consequences? I’m guessing, 90% of the problems would disappear. Oh, that’s right, parents would never support that.

I’m not sure this is the case with other states, but here’s my take. My district has four school psychologists. When a child is recommended for eval the school psychologist has 60 school days to complete this report. Why can’t they ever have the evals done before 60 school days? The other issue is that when the psychologist comes in to share their findings and make suggestions for IEP’s, their word is often taken as law. Keep in mind that they observed the child for two hours tops, which usually make the SDI’s ineffective. At least that my experience from the classroom for 28 years. They never consult with the teachers with the exception of the teacher completing a “bubble” sheet. IMO, the entire process is inefficient and outdated.

We all have one counselor for each elementary building, two at each middle school, and five at the highschool. For the last 20 years, we’ve been told that the counselors are not trained to do behavior therapy. Ours handle class schedules, state testing prep, and have hour lunches. (Mine is 25 minutes.) Why are they even there is they can’t counsel. That is my mind is a real waste of money. While I know that the district can’t be responsible for every behavioral crisis, if the can’t counsel students, why even have them? Why can’t districts even begin to make a dent in all the behavioral needs to get those kids back in class and attend to academics? It’s just so ridiculous.

Mental health decline follows break down of
American family.

I teach preschool and we have to share a school psychologist with the big schools. We could use a full time preschool school psychologist. I know districts that do. She did over 50 evaluations for use last year. We have 90 days to get evals done. No way could we if we were hiring out from somewhere else.

In Ohio, we share a psychologist between 2 schools. She does all of the special education testing and writes the initial ETR, then meets with the parents to explain what will happen next. They are very busy every second they are with us because we have a growing number of students who are special needs.

I wish we had more. We have two and they are overworked! With all due respect, these kids are dealing with things previous generations didn’t have to. I love that mental health is a priority for them and that they are able and willing to take advantage of it!

Someone clarify for me please. Do some schools employ psychologists to provide mental health services to staff and/or students?
To my knowledge school psyc's have always been employed strictly for special education services. Our district employs 2 full time psyc's and commonly uses them to provide services to smaller school districts as well.

I know this works different in different states, but most states are already providing funding for psychology and mental health clinics and/or allowing them to bill state provided insurance.
I suppose there's two ways to look at employing them for mental health counseling in schools. One, that it's redundant since the state is already providing the services elsewhere. Tow, since the state is paying for most of it anyway they might as well be capturing some of the kids while they're at school.

Our schools have much larger student populations overall. Plus with better understanding of high functioning special needs and the beavioral/developmental effects of early childhood traumas, full-time on-site pyschologists are needed. Plus many states are going to full day Pre-K so that adds another grade level of students that schools are obligated to the child find process.

Who is going to identify potential mass casualty actors if it’s not the psychologists? The teachers? The janitors? It has been empirically proven that the young people of today are more isolated, more socially stressed, more susceptible to radicalization from online bad actors, out of shape because of more sedentary lifestyles and have poorer physical conditioning. Also , fewer positive male role models, and poorer social skills due to reduced participation in team sports.

The issue is not so much whether school psychologists should be in schools, but rather, what is being done to help these kids once identified.

Time to wake up and address the problem. The cost of inaction is always far greater than the cost of prevention.

They help students deal with stress, anxiety, depression, grief, anger, and social problems.
Help with learning challenges
They identify learning difficulties, attention issues (like ADHD), and help create support plans so students can succeed academically.
Crisis support
If something serious happens (bullying, self-harm concerns, family issues), they step in to keep students safe and supported.
Build coping and social skulls
They teach strategies for managing emotions, handling conflict, and improving self-confidence.
Work with teachers and families
They help adults understand what a student needs and how to support them at school and at home.

I’m not in California so my state doesn’t have anything like this program. However, I can definitely see the benefit of having psychologist readily available for students who need them. Too often, kids in need fall through the cracks and having professionals available could make a world a difference here.

We have school psychologists and social workers in each school in Israel. Guess what, it makes life a lot easier when you have someone who helps monitor students' mental health, helps deal with SEN kids when they throw strops, talks with the local authorities on the subject. Takes a boatload of work off teachers' shoulders. I tell you more, I worked at one of London;s univeristies for 16 years before moving country. Guess what?! We had a separate student and staff mental health support department. Maybe because mental health matters. Unless you are a communist. Then you don't need brains, the Party does the thinking for you, right, California?