Metro Atlanta school systems give psychological evaluations to more than 10,000 students each year to see if they need support for academic, social, emotional or behavioral challenges.
Schools rely on partnerships with local colleges, Saturday shifts and contractors to make it happen.
It’s a heavy lift, thanks to a significant shortage of school psychologists in Georgia.
State lawmakers have noticed. They approved a bill last week that would make it easier to hire school psychologists, and they are considering a new grant for schools to spend on mental health supports for students.
The interest from lawmakers is born, in part, from a renewed focus on school safety. After four people were killed in a shooting at Apalachee High School in September, there’s an increased urgency to help students who have behavioral or emotional problems before it’s too late.
It’s been an issue in Georgia schools for a while, say those on the front lines.
“There is a critical shortage of school psychologists in Georgia,” said MaryAnn Green, the director of psychological services in Atlanta Public Schools.
School psychologists are specialists with advanced degrees who can provide direct psychological support to students, consult with teachers, administrators and families to improve schoolwide practices, and collaborate with community providers. The National Association of School Psychologists recommends a ratio of one school psychologist for every 500 students. Though almost every state falls short of that standard, Georgia had one of the worst ratios in the country last school year: 1 for every 2,018 students, according to the association.
“That’s really like a pie-in-the-sky dream,” Green said of the recommended ratio.
APS has doubled its number of school psychologists in the past five years, so its ratio is now roughly one psychologist for every 900 students. In DeKalb County, the ratio is roughly one psychologist for every 1,700 students — also an improvement over recent years.
They could still use more help.
“We have nearly 30 vacancies that we could hire right now for more school psychologists,” said Norman Sauce, the chief of student services in DeKalb schools. “We would welcome additional funding, but there’s more of a problem on the front end.”
School psychologists in Georgia are required to have an education specialist degree, which is just one level below a Ph.D. But there are only a few programs in Georgia that offer that degree program, and it’s hard to transfer credentials between states. It keeps the pool of job candidates small.
Lawmakers recently approved House Bill 81, which will make it easier to hire out-of-state school psychologists. It now goes to Gov. Brian Kemp to sign into law. Green, who is also on the board for the Georgia Association of School Psychologists, said it could be “a game changer” for the state.
Despite the hiring challenges, DeKalb County has recently worked through a backlog, which started during the COVID-19 pandemic, of hundreds of students who were waiting for psychological evaluations. It’s a process that can take more than 10 hours of student testing and observation and can be initiated by school staff or requested by parents. The evaluations could be for students who are suspected of having a learning disability, students who may have autism or students who are having behavior problems in the classroom, to name a few possibilities.
Like other metro Atlanta school systems, DeKalb contracted with vendors when it couldn’t hire its own psychologists, started offering evaluations on Saturdays and increased the number of paid internships offered to students working toward their degrees. DeKalb also leverages federal grant funds to cover tuition for those students to further attract workers.
DeKalb, the state’s third-largest school system, has conducted 1,300 evaluations so far this school year. APS is on track to complete about 1,500. Gwinnett County, the state’s largest school system, typically gets through about 5,000 evaluations every year. Fulton County averages about 2,200.
In a letter to lawmakers, Georgia Association of School Psychologists President Rachel Greenlee said the professionals help ensure that students can learn and teachers can teach.
“If there was ever a time to alleviate barriers for school psychologists to come to our state and support our schools, it is now,” she wrote.
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