The Medical Lake School District is receiving nearly $3.5 million to train more school psychologists.
The money from the U.S. Department of Education – paid over four years -- will allow Medical Lake to pay graduate students from the University of Washington and other Spokane area colleges to work at the district. For years, the district has employed unpaid interns for counseling services.
Medical Lake Superintendent Kim Headrick says the two of the four positions paid for by the grant will be based in her district, and two will be placed at high-need rural schools within Educational Service District 101.
That way, Headrick says, rural districts also get psychologists who can “support students, families, staff, and really be as a preventative model versus a reaction model.”
She says ESD officials are gauging interest among their member districts.
“We had a superintendent from a school district kind of west of us on Highway 2, email us and say, hey, I'm ready for one of those school sites,” Headrick said.
The interns will work for a year and become certified school psychologists.
Once they graduate, they’ll be required to work for two years in schools around northeastern Washington.
The model program
The grant draws upon Medical Lake’s experience in creating a mental health internship program in 2018.
“We have anywhere between 15 and 18 interns operating within our schools on an annual basis,” said Tawni Barlow, the district’s director of integrated student and community services..
“Bottom line, it puts more helpers in classrooms with teachers. And so school psych can go in and support in a classroom, whether it be academically, socially, emotionally. They can support the student, they can support the teacher and they can provide recommendations at home,” she said.
Medical Lake’s program includes not just psychologists, but also school nurses, social workers, even marriage counselors.
“We do a lot of family therapy and couples therapy,” Barlow said. “And we see staff for free mental health as well. When you see that staff are accessing the mental health services as well, you can tell that we're making a difference.
“I have one student in particular who has lost his parent to drug overdose. He is a student with a disability and he's graduated, has an income. And he was able to kind of share his story and what he went through of being pretty angry. And then he moved to understanding that those feelings, he was actually scared. And, you know, now continuing, he still just stays in touch with us and says, you know, this school district and the efforts really saved him,” she said.
