DeKalb District 428 grapples with challenges of school psychologist shortage amid youth mental health crisis

The district currently has five available positions for full-time school psychologists, despite recruitment efforts

Kyle Gerdes, director of student services and homeless liaison for DeKalb District 428, gives a report to the school board at the Aug. 16, 2022 meeting of the DeKalb District 428 School Board.

DeKALB – As the need for mental health support among youth has risen to a crisis level amid the pandemic, the leadership in DeKalb School District 428 said they are struggling to recruit school psychologists.

The district has five available positions for full-time school psychologists despite recruitment efforts, officials said.

But that’s nothing new to District 428 schools, officials said.

“More locally in our district, it hasn’t been uncommon over the last three years for us to be short at least one, if not more, school psychologists, in spite of obviously having our positions posted, attending job fairs, reaching out to the graduate programs in the state and across the country,” said Kyle Gerdes, District 428 director of student services. “More locally, [Northern Illinois University] has got a really great school psych program that we certainly benefit from some of their graduates from time to time. But even with that program in our backyard, we still struggle to fill all of our openings.”

Gerdes said the school psychologist field in general has faced its share of challenges over the years for a number of reasons.

“Part of it was a lot of retirees coming up,” Gerdes said. “There’s also not as many [school] psych grad programs across the country as there are for some other educational careers. It’s competitive to get into those programs. The pipeline of school psychologists hasn’t been there, and that’s been known for a number of years.”

If District 428 were to fill its five vacancies, the district would have 13 school psychologists on staff. That would make for an increase of two positions over last spring, when the school board decided to budget for more help.

“That’s because we felt that there’s a need for more than what we currently had staffed,” Gerdes said.

The school board last week authorized an amendment to a contract between the district and the Center for Special Education Services to provide special education evaluations.

Since that time, the district hasn’t had any applicant or had any opportunity to hire a school psychologist, officials said.

“The prospect of filling these positions midyear are really low because typically people are hired over the summer or in the spring for the upcoming school year,” Gerdes said. “[I’m] not saying we won’t be able to fill one or a few of these positions. But I would say at this point in time, we’ve had the positions posted for several months now and, unfortunately, [we] just don’t have the applicants that we would’ve hoped.”

Ann Reineck, a school psychologist at Founders and Jefferson Elementary schools, said it’s a balancing act being assigned to two schools as opposed to one building in a typical year.

“For me personally, I know that I can’t be as involved as I would like to be or I would be in were we fully staffed,” Reineck said. “Typically, I’d like to be more proactive in working with teams. … But, unfortunately with the shortage, I don’t have as much time or flexibility in my schedule to be a part of those teams. I’m working with students when they’ve already got to the point where we think they might need additional services. So, I’m not able to get involved as early as I would in a typical year.”

Reineck said the administration is trying to avoid assigning the school psychologists on staff to a third school building and instead turning to contract out special education evaluation services.

“It’s challenging enough to be stretched to two [buildings],” Reineck said.

Gerdes said he believes contracting special education evaluation services will benefit the school psychologists on staff.

“The group that we contracted with, they are going to really help us with special education evaluations in some of our schools,” Gerdes said. “They’re able to take a part of our school psych’s role and cover that part of it. What they’re not able to cover is a lot of the things that school psychs do in the buildings day to day, whether it be working individually with students or working with staff.”

Reineck said that although she hasn’t yet contracted out for special education evaluation services, she is aware of the resource that is available to her.

Reineck said she feels supported by the district and is appreciative of the efforts put in by Gerdes and Lisa Becker, District 428′s assistant director of student services.

Gerdes said he doesn’t believe the number of school psychologist vacancies is hurting the district’s ability to serve the mental health needs of students.

“Obviously, we have five openings,” he said. “That being said, we feel like we need five more school psychologists to truly be able to provide the type of support that we would ideally like to do. However, due to that shortage, what we’ve been able to do, we have to think a little bit differently on how we provide mental heath support for students.”

Last spring, the school board supported the addition of several school counselors and social workers that would help the district’s students should they be struggling, officials said.

Gerdes said the district stands by its efforts to support student mental health needs.

“We actually have a lot more resources than we did last year when it comes to supporting mental health needs of students,” Gerdes said. “Unfortunately, right now given the shortage of school psychologists, we could still utilize more if we had those positions filled. With that said, I think we have been able to provide a pretty good outcome so far this year in terms of accessibility for services in our schools because of some of the other positions that have been added.”

Have a Question about this Daily Chronicle article?