NIU awarded $5.1M federal grant to launch school psychology program for area public schools

DeKALB – Northern Illinois University plans to use $5.1 million in federal grant money to start a three-year program intended to help address a shortage of school psychologists in public schools throughout the region.

University officials said the program, dubbed Preparing Educators as School Psychologists in Northern Illinois, is believed to be the first of its kind in the state. In its early years, the program is expected to help DeKalb School District 428, Belvidere School District 100, Harlem School District 122 near Rockford and the Northwest Special Education Cooperative, which covers 11 rural school districts in Carroll, Jo Daviess and Stephenson counties.

Part educator, part psychologist, part data analyst, a school psychologists’ job is multifaceted, NIU psychology professor Christine Malecki said. Many take on roles where they’re helping individualized case management, analyzing districtwide mental health and resource trends, and helping area schools prioritize a focus on social and emotional well-being, Malecki said.

“What makes school psychologists unique – compared to other professionals, like social workers and school counselors – is that each of those positions has kind of a speciality area,” said Malecki, who’s also NIU’s director of clinical training for the school psychology program. “Social workers really would be that social-emotional realm. But school psychs have both an academic side of things, social emotional and school psychologists are also trained not only to look at individual student needs but system level.”

NIU’s current school psychology programs offerings include a five-year doctoral path and a three-year path toward becoming a specialist in school psychology, which is beyond a master’s degree. The university typically takes four students in each program, Malecki said.

The new program will start with three separate cohorts of eight. Each group, which will be made up of current educators in each of the participating public school districts, will undergo three years of specialized education to become school psychologists.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a 10-year look at high school student mental health data showed student experience with violence, mental health and suicidal thoughts, and behaviors worsened significantly from 2011 to 2021.

For educators, addressing a child’s experience holistically while also providing relevant learning in the classroom means added efforts to meet students’ needs.

That’s where school psychologists come in.

“Our students are really struggling with anxiety, so school psychs can look at data, patterns, do analyses to find some of those patterns and identify, ‘This is a need we have that we should address schoolwide,’ ” Malecki said. “But then school psychs can also do individual work, so we look at systems-level school work, all the way down to individual level. School psychs are very versatile in their knowledge, and their training is very broad.”

Educator shortages aren’t a new issue in Illinois. On Friday, Gov. JB Pritzker announced a $70 million plan to address teacher shortages, touting his proposed Teacher Pipeline Grant Program as part of his latest budget proposal. The program would target educator vacancies in 170 Illinois school districts that account for 80% of the unfilled teaching jobs in the state.

“Our students are really struggling with anxiety, so school psychs can look at data, patterns, do analyses to find some of those patterns and identify ‘This is a need we have that we should address school wide.’”

—  Christine Malecki, NIU psychology professor

Malecki said she believes every public school district needs a school psychologist. However, shortages and budget constraints are an ongoing barrier to providing needed services for schoolchildren.

“There is a shortage right now, so there aren’t enough school psychologists to meet just even the basic needs of those positions throughout the state,” Malecki said. “But then, put on top of that the increased need that we’re seeing in schools and in communities for, in particular, mental health services for kids, then the need is even more dire.”

Fewer school psychologists, compared with students, leads to overloaded employees, she said.

“Even the best-trained school psychologists are not able to employ best-practice approaches when they are experiencing excessively large caseloads,” professor Michelle Demaray, the project’s co-director, said in a news release. “Importantly, this lack of mental health services specifically affects underrepresented students in high-need districts more profoundly. Students living in poverty are less likely to have insurance, making it more difficult to receive services outside of schools.”

An added grant stipulation requires NIU to recruit underrepresented candidates for the new school psychology program, including educators of color, bilingual people and men.

“You’re developing these homegrown school psychologists, meaning they’re from the community they will eventually be working in,” Malecki said. “They understand students and where they’re coming from, they can connect with them, they know resources in the community more than someone that was commuting in. Secondly, they’re more likely to stay.”

Awareness that school psychology is an available career field for incoming college students or aspiring young educators figuring out a specialty path also should increase, Malecki said.

Since the program was announced, Malecki has fielded dozens of emails from interested educators, at least half from DeKalb schools, she said. Teachers and administrators across the state also are showing interest in the program.

Malecki said she believes the $5 million grant, administered through the U.S. Department of Education, will help fund continuing education for working professionals.

According to NIU’s website, the new program will offer the three-year intensive training for free thanks to the grant. It also will offer participants a laptop and stipend for materials and conference travel.

“Our partner districts indicated that many of their educators are interested in training to become school psychologists,” psychology professor Julia Ogg, another program co-director, said in a news release. “But they couldn’t afford to quit teaching to attend graduate school full time. Our new program addresses these financial and time concerns.”

Participants will take two courses per semester, including summers, for the first year. Participants will complete school psychology practicums once a week in the fall and spring semesters in the second year, and follow up with a full-time school psychology internship the third year. As part of the grant, participating districts have agreed to pay participants their typical educator salary during the three-year internship.

Malecki said NIU School of Psychology alumni will teach the new training course.

Each cohort will walk away with a specialist in school psychology degree, a professional educator license and a school psychology endorsement in Illinois. Graduated participants also must commit to work as a school psychologist in their respective districts for the next five years.

With the program’s announcement, the reality of the need for more specialized educators has been underscored to NIU, Malecki said.

“One thing that we are starting to talk about at NIU is how can we expand this program? How can we do more of it because the interest is so intense?” Malecki said. “Because although we’re very proud, by the end of this, we will have produced 24 new school psychologists. The needs are much more intense than that.”