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Yakima schools eye additional state funding for staff to support students' physical and mental health

Yakima Herald-Republic - 5/1/2022

May 1—Washington school districts will receive funding for additional staff to support students' physical and mental health, thanks to new legislation.

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, positions that support those student needs are often viewed as supplementary. Advocates said this legislation will protect funding for those roles.

While these positions have sometimes been difficult to fill, local schools have found ways to provide support for their students. Officials said they are looking forward to the extra financial support.

Secure funds

HB 1664, signed in March by Gov. Jay Inslee, guarantees additional funding for school districts to add education staff associate positions. ESAs include behavior analysts, counselors, nurses, occupational therapists, orientation and mobility specialists, physical therapists, psychologists, social workers and speech language pathologists, according to the state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction.

Funds will be distributed based on school size, using a prototypical model, the final legislative report on HB 1664 said.

It is largely up to districts how to spend these funds, based on their ESA needs, according to the report.

Kia Franklin is director of Stand for Children Washington, an education advocacy group that supported HB 1664. She said that last legislative session, a separate bill passed that called for additional counselors in schools.

HB 1664 secured funding for counselors, but also broadened the positions in which funding can be used, she said.

"We want districts and schools to be able to make the call as to what they need most," she said. "But we also want to protect the funding to say whatever you need most, this money is to be spent on support staff of some kind."

While the funds cannot be used to hire additional classroom teachers, it also does not take away from funding that districts would normally use to pay teachers, Franklin said. Instead, it supplements districts so they do not have to choose between hiring classroom teachers and hiring support staff.

Impact in Yakima

HB 1664 does not go into effect until June 9, making it too early for most districts to know exactly how the changes will impact them.

However, local districts have been keeping an eye on both the legislation and the social and emotional needs of their students.

Sandra Birley is the director of special services for Toppenish School District. She said referrals for mental health services are the highest they've ever been.

Under the new legislation, the district can bring on several kinds of support staff. Counselors and mental health professionals are a priority, Birley said.

The district is also looking to use some of the funds to continue to support its nursing staff. During the pandemic, the district has used COVID-19 relief funds to help cover nurses and health aides.

Though there was a demand for student mental health services prior to 2020, the pandemic and remote learning brought the need into even sharper focus.

K.C. Mitchell works in the Yakima School District'sStudent Services Department. He said the district has been taking a close look at reported issues regarding student mental health. A screening of 500 Davis High School students found that peer pressure, stress, anxiety and grief were among the most commonly reported emotional struggles.

Mitchell said the district has worked with its counselors and coordinated with Educational Service District 105 to target these issues.

While the final monetary impact of HB 1664 on the district isn't yet clear, Mitchell said hiring more support staff will help improve student services — which ultimately leads to positive changes in academics.

"Any extra help that we receive and the ability to hire more and more qualified staff to provide direct services to students is going to be an improvement for us," Mitchell said.

Current support

Since returning from remote learning, districts have been pushing to expand social and emotional support services for students.

This school year, the Yakima School District added eight counselors, Mitchell said. That brought the total to 41, according to a presentation given at the April 11 Yakima school board meeting.

The district uses a data-driven approach to identify which campuses have students in need of additional support positions, Mitchell said. Each Yakima elementary school has a counselor, and some have emotional specialists. The district also utilizes a multi-tiered system of support specialists at its elementary and middle schools.

A multi-tiered system of support is a pyramidlike framework that identifies and groups students based on their increasing levels of need. Going up the pyramid, smaller groups of students require more intense support. It is used in many Washington schools.

In Toppenish, the district has six psychologists, who are funded through the special education budget, Birley said.

Each elementary school building has a counselor or a social worker and some of the larger schools have behavior specialists as well. And at Valley View Elementary School, teacher Sabrina Castro leads a social emotional learning class for various groups of students, Birley said.

The middle school has two counselors and a social worker, she said. The high school has three counselors and a social worker. And the district added a counselor for its preschool program this year.

Short supply

Counseling positions have not always been easy to fill or keep filled, Birley said.

Several school districts in Yakima County advertised open support positions online during April, including posts for six school counselors, three social workers, two psychologists and four nursing-related positions.

Nationwide, districts have struggled to attract enough counselors and other mental health professionals.

The American School Counselor Association recommends a ratio of one counselor to every 250 students. Less than 1% of Washington students were enrolled in districts that met that recommended ratio, according to an investigation by EducationWeek that used the most recent data from the National Center for Education Statistics.

That investigation also found that less than 1% of Washington students were enrolled in school districts that met the recommended ratio of 1 school psychologist for every 500 students.

Birley said Toppenish had found creative solutions to filling roles and supporting students. She mentioned reaching out to a family member of a current district employee while he was in college training to be a school psychologist.

"So, he would return, and we would have a local bilingual school (psychologist) with us who's starting this year," she said.

In Yakima, Mitchell said social emotional learning positions have been difficult to fill in the past, but the district found some success recruiting internally.

While the new legislation will grant schools funds to hire additional support staff, the large number of soon-to-be-open positions might not be filled immediately, as there are only so many qualified candidates.

"I think one of the challenges is as we post those positions in the district, so will every other district in our Valley," Birley said.

Contact Vanessa Ontiveros at vontiveros@yakimaherald.com.

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