The Medical Lake School District is expanding its training program for mental health professionals in schools thanks to a new $3.5 million federal grant from the U.S. Department of Education that will allow the training of four school psychology graduate student interns over each of the next four years.
The grant joins the school district’s program to provide training opportunities to interns from Whitworth University and Gonzaga University providing mental health services to students and families and staffing the Wellness Center, which is open to the community and offers classes in everything from suicide prevention to drug and alcohol prevention and intervention. The district currently has interns in clinical mental health, marriage and family therapy and licensed mental health.
The district is committed to providing mental health services, said Director of Integrated Student and Community Services Tawni Barlow. “We have a pretty motivated leadership team and school board that ensures the wellness of the kids, the families, the community,” she said. “We already have a really established intern program.”
The school district is partnering with Educational Service District 101 (ESD 101), which covers Eastern Washington, and the University of Washington for the grant program. The grant-funded positions are currently open to UW school psychology students and applications are being accepted for the first four positions.
The school district could not manage the grant without its partnerships with ESD 101 and UW, Barlow said. The partnerships allow the school district to act as a school mental health training hub in Eastern Washington. “We can do this work together,” she said.
Medical Lake superintendent Kim Headrick called the grant program a “transformative opportunity.” “By partnering with the University of Washington School Psychology program and ESD 101 for the 4-year grant, we are not just addressing a workforce shortage, we are building a sustainable system to ensure every student in our region, especially those in rural settings, has access to the high-quality mental health support they deserve to thrive academically and personally.”
Kristen Missall, Director of the UW School Psychology Program, said in a press release that the university is thrilled with the partnership that will allow the university’s student to work in real-world, high need environments. “By partnering with MLSD and the surrounding ESD 101 region, we establish a clear pathway for students and graduates who are deeply committed to rural service to develop into highly effective mental health service professionals, equipped to make a meaningful and lasting impact in their communities.”
Just as many schools don’t have full-time nurses or any nurse at all, most schools don’t have a psychologist on staff, Barlow said, even though psychologists are the only ones who can do certain needs assessments, program reviews and school evaluations. “Many districts can’t find school psychologists and they just hire them to do testing, not mental health,” she said.
If a district can find a school psychologist, they’re often not fully funded through money provided by the state and have to be paid with levy funds. For example, Medical Lake is provided money by the state to pay a half-time school psychologist position. The district has two full-time psychologists on staff.
Being a school psychologist is different than other psychology work, Barlow said. “School mental health is much different that community mental health,” she said. “You’re integrating with teachers.”
The grant funded interns will be supervised by experienced professionals already on staff at the district. They’ll be training in the 10 Domains of Practice set by the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP), Barlow said, which include data-based decision making, consultation and collaboration, academic interventions and mental and behavioral health services. They’ll also receive training in trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy as well as crisis prevention and de-escalation.
The goal of the federal grant program is to increase mental health access in rural communities. The UW students will be placed in rural school districts in ESD 101 for their year-long internship. One of the requirements of the program is that the interns agree to work as a school psychologist for a minimum of two years in the one of the 59 school districts in ESD 101 after they graduate.
“That’s 16 school psychologists coming into Eastern Washington that we haven’t had,” she said.
The grant funded internships are generous ones. The grant will pay for tuition at UW as well as provide a salary of $50,000 for the year and money to attend required conferences. Not all internships are paid and if they are, students usually have to still pay tuition on their own, Barlow said.
Several school districts have expressed an interest in having a school psychologist intern and Barlow said she’s asking those districts to consider hiring the interns after they graduate. The hope is that the new graduates will want to stay in the rural districts they served as an intern, Barlow said. “It’s really difficult to get mental health professionals into these rural cities,” she said.
