Georgetown ISD waives certification requirement for counselors

GEORGETOWN, Texas (KXAN) — As more students reach out for mental health services, mental health professionals who provide the help can be hard to find.

In many school districts across Texas there are vacancies for school counselor positions, and it can be a challenge to find candidates to fill them.

"Depression, anxiety, bipolar, autism," said former school counselor Amy Goodwin. "There is a lot of learning and education that goes into learning about those childhood disorders."

Goodwin spent years helping students in need and is now worried about the lack of resources students receive when it comes to mental health services.

"You have to know how to work with kids who have trauma, and then a big piece is critical crisis intervention and critical incident response," Goodwin said.

A lack of funding from the state has also made it hard on school districts to pay or hire more mental health professionals.

"If the Texas legislature ever got to the point where they appropriately funded our schools, we would use any additional funding we could find to put more mental health services in our schools, in terms of counselors," Georgetown ISD Superintendent Devin Padavil said.

In an effort to open up to more candidates, the Georgetown Independent School District's board of trustees approved a waiver that removes the Texas Education Agency's certification requirement for school counselors. They still must be licensed through the Texas State Board though.

Under TEA requirements counselors need to pass an exam to work in Texas schools.

"Right now with a counseling shortage we also know that there are lots of people who can be certified as school-based therapists," Padavil said.

The waiver allows the district to hire licensed professional counselors, Master social workers and clinical social workers.

According to the American School Counselor Association, the recommended ratio of counselor to student is 250:1, but the national student-to-school counselor ratio was 376:1.

"It is absolutely necessary that we attend to the mental health needs of our students," Padavil said.