TCSS Stresses Need For Additional Social Workers

TUSCALOOSA, AL. — As the student population continues to grow for the Tuscaloosa County School System (TCSS), the need for more professionally-trained social workers and counselors has presented itself, according to TCSS representatives addressing the Tuscaloosa County Commission on Wednesday.

TCSS Director of Accountability Jackie Hudgins said the system currently has eight social workers and 42 counselors serving 34 schools. In total, though, the eight social workers are only able to serve 12 schools in system, based on need.

"The state of Alabama funds us for school counselors based on one school counselor per 500 students, then there’s a little scale that goes up from there that when we reach 750, we earn another half unit," she said.

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None of the district's elementary schools have more than one counselor, Hudgins pointed out.

"We do have schools that have two counselors just by nature of the size, but what’s provided by the state, you realize our district is absorbing the extra finances to acquire that second full-time counselor, even if both of those schools — Brookwood Middle and Echols — would only qualify for one other half. It's really difficult for a person to do half a job, so our district has come in with local funds to supplement that."

Hudgins cited the American School Counselor Association during the meeting, too, saying the organization recommends schools have one counselor per 250 students.

"You can see that the need is tremendous and as we move forward, there will be even more evidence to support that," she said.

Providing a trove of data to support lobbying for the system's needs as they relate to social workers and counselors, Hudgins said two TCSS elementary schools with 700 or more students — Lake View Elementary and Walker Elementary — each had only one counselor.

TCSS Attendance Officer Suzette Wyatt also addressed the Commission, speaking on the importance of social workers and the need for more qualified professionals working with students in the system.

Wyatt said the eight social workers, five of whom are under contract, aren't county board employees. She then provided anecdotal evidence, saying one social worker has been with TCSS for five years under a School Improvement Grant at Holt High School, which she underscored as one of the system's most venerable schools.

"That grant runs out this year and there's no money to sustain her," she said. "We’ve got five years of experience walking away from us because we don’t have a way to continue to pay her."

Conversely, Wyatt praised the five contract social workers hired through Tuscaloosa One Place (TOP), a family resource center that provides a wide-range of services to the community.

Wyatt said the five social workers hired through TOP had been with the system for three years now and have proven to be successful assets.

"We can’t educate our children if they are not able to sit still, focus, think," she said. "If they come from chaotic family lives that’s almost like a battlefield and you try to ignore that, you’re never going to get the accomplishments we need to accomplish academically."

Despite the system's last school year ending in-person instruction in March due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Wyatt said the pool of social workers put in countless hours to track down at-risk and underprivileged students over the summer to ensure they had learning materials and enough food to eat. This effort included 7,000 student contacts made by the social workers, in addition to 600 crisis interventions and more than 100 reports filed with the Alabama Department of Human Resources, which doesn't take into account reports filed by teachers and staff, who are mandatory reporters.

The efforts are more than commendable, Wyatt said, before again lamenting the low number of social workers available.

"That leaves us with 22 schools that has nobody to cover," she said. "If you think for one minute those schools don’t have the same problems as the others, you’re wrong. The reason the eight are where they are is because of suicide protocols. The schools with the highest numbers [of suicide interventions] are the ones who got the contract workers."

TCSS Mental Health Services Coordinator Angela Kelly rounded out the system's pitch for additional support, saying TCSS lags counterparts to the north and west who place a higher premium on on-site social workers.

She then cited the COVID-19 pandemic as having unexpected effects on students who had previously never reported anxiety or depression.

"We’re seeing more children, not just our at-risk children, that this touches," she said. "It has nothing to do with ethnicity, their poverty level. It has nothing to do with all that. It’s across the board."

Kelly also mentioned the lack of a dedicated juvenile mental health facility in Tuscaloosa as having an impact on those most in need in the community. She said students can be sent to Indian Rivers Mental Health Center for crisis care, while the closest place to receive treatment is in Birmingham.

"Where we see these kids end up is being detained in juvenile court or in detention," Kelly said. "From detention, the chief probation officers says 65-70% of the students they detain exhibit mental health problems and require treatment."

Perhaps the most startling statistic provided by TCSS representatives came in the form of climbing suicide intervention referrals.

For the 2017-2018 school year, the total number of suicide intervention referrals was reported at 250 — a number that grew to 351 for the 2018-2019 school year. What's more, from the beginning of the school year on Aug. 20 to Sept. 30, TCSS logged a total number of 32.

"That's a lot for 30 days," Hudgins said. " We’ve had over one suicide protocol completed each day."

The recommendation from the system, following the presentation, focused primarily on hiring more social workers from TOP, with the wish-list number being 11 new social workers.

District 1 Commissioner Stan Acker said he participated in a work session hosted by TCSS that incorporated other business leaders where he first learned of the issues presented on Wednesday. When talk turned to suicide intervention, Acker said the gravity of the situation at hand caught his attention.

"This isn’t unruly kids in the classroom," he said. "This is something much, much deeper. We obviously can’t do everything for the school system, but if we can figure out a way to partner with Tuscaloosa One Place and perhaps bring some businesses into it as well."

Probate Judge and Commission Chair Rob Robertson said he deals primarily with the adult side of mental health in probate court, but said it is no doubt that the problem relating to suicides is growing and manifesting in younger children each year.

"Surely we can come up with some better options," Robertson said.

District 3 Commissioner Mark Nelson also asked for the system to provide concrete cost numbers for the Commission to consider before making a formal decision — numbers Hudgins said were readily available.

Acker then said while hiring 11 new social workers might not be feasible, hiring as many new faces as possible could go a long way toward the system's mission of getting students the help they need.

"It’d be great to get 10, but if you got two, it's two more to throw into the battles," he said.