News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
The Clay County School System has contracted with an outside service to fill the District Psychologist role.
ProCare Therapy will be utilized for $77 an hour. Director of Schools Matt Eldridge said it was a challenging role to fill, but one of importance for all students.
“When we came back this past year with the COVID-19 situation there were a lot of students and we were alerted to this and we all knew this that there were going to be a lot of students struggling with that,” Eldridge said. “Because they had not had a normal life for a while.”
The anticipation is to only need the service for two days a week.
Eldridge said that because of difficulties finding someone certified to fill the role locally, the system has contracted with an outside service for psychology before. Eldridge said all the same services will be provided as though the psychologist is in-house.
“They’ll look at their IEP, Individualized Education Plans to see what they need,” Eldridge said. “They can interview the students, they can look at their background, their records and put any needs that fall on that student for special services.”
Only two applications came in for the position, which took weeks to get. Eldridge said the system did have the position filled locally until recently.
“We had one on a 120-day contract and she’s moved back to east Tennessee,” Eldridge said. “They’re hard to find right now, so we’ve contracted with outside services. Actually I think about four years ago we had contracted with the service also and then we had someone that we could bring on, on staff. That’s what we did, now we’ve lost them.”
Eldridge said that filling the role was a critical need in today’s climate with more kids expressing their stress and anxiety at a younger age. The system psychologist will serve all three schools in Clay County.
