They respond to students in crisis. Soon, they could lose their jobs.

After a February shooting at Wootton High School, nearly 100 mental health professionals flooded the campus to help traumatized students rebuild their sense of safety.

Among them was Liliana Ferrufino. She’s usually stationed 3 miles away, at Winston Churchill High, but she knows it’s a school psychologist’s job to show up where kids are in crisis.

Ferrufino’s position is now a potential casualty of a $36 million funding gap that is expected to cost hundreds of Montgomery County Public Schools staffers their jobs. Many of the proposed cuts would impact mental health services.

Superintendent Thomas Taylor has proposed axing 20 school psychologist positions, which would save about $2 million. The proposal to eliminate these jobs came as a shock because they weren’t all listed in Taylor’s first roster of potential cuts.

The district’s latest budget proposal recommends cutting 18 of the 135 current school psychologist positions, district spokesperson Liliana López said in a statement. Two resource psychologists are also on the list.

“These adjustments were made after careful evaluation to protect direct classroom instruction, while ensuring the district remains mindful of its obligations to meet all state law requirements,” López said.

The decision isn’t final until a school board vote scheduled for June 4.

As she waits, Ferrufino is updating her resume. It’s a painful chore for the 2016 Watkins Mill graduate who thought she’d found the perfect way to give back to her community.

“I tell people all the time, ‘This is my dream job,’” she said. “I’m working my dream job.”

She and other psychologists are rallying to try to save their livelihoods. Many of them packed into a recent school board meeting, along with dozens of social workers and other staffers whose jobs are also on the line. They asked district officials to reconsider cutting the people who work with the county’s most vulnerable children.

Losing psychologists, they say, will strain resources in the district, placing children at risk at a time when many of them are grappling with mental health issues. Overburdening psychologists can also leave the district vulnerable to lawsuits, they added.

Many are already serving multiple campuses.

The National Association of School Psychologists recommends a ratio of one psychologist for every 500 students. But in MCPS, they are often responsible for double or triple, even quadruple, that number.

Parents worry about what these cuts could mean for their children, particularly those with complex needs.

Oz Papados, whose son has autism, said schools without adequate psychological support can end up shifting the burden onto parents to be emergency responders, case managers and behavioral specialists.

“School psychologists are not optional extras,” she wrote in a letter to the school board. “They are often the people who help schools understand the difference between ‘bad behavior’ and disability-related distress.”

Safe adults

One of the essential roles of a school psychologist is evaluating students with disabilities to determine what resources they need. They are required to adhere to strict timelines for such assessments, and failure to do so can lead to legal complaints from parents.

MCPS spent more than $200,000 in outside special education legal expenses as of March this year, according to district documents.

“Whatever savings they feel that they’re going to have by cutting us are going to be offset by the fact that they’re going to be dealing with a lot more legal challenges,” said Allison Jacobus, a school psychologist who splits her hours between three elementary schools.

Much of Jacobus’ time is spent on the official duties that fall to school psychologists: meetings, reports and evaluations aimed at ensuring that students with disabilities get what they need to learn. She is also trained to assess threatening behavior to determine if a child is a risk to themself or others.

Plus, Jacobus looks out for students who need a “safe adult” — someone who will listen to them and help them process all the hard stuff that comes with growing up.

“Children who require mental health supports often don’t get it in the community, because there’s a lot of barriers, right? There’s costs, there’s transportation, there’s just availability of providers,” Jacobus said. “If we have mental health staff in the building, that is where the children are. They’re here 6 1/2 hours every day.”

According to the Montgomery County School Psychologists’ Association, their members completed over 4,000 psychological assessments and more than 1,700 counseling sessions this year.

In addition to the proposed psychologist cuts, Taylor’s plan would eliminate more than three dozen social worker positions, which is projected to save about $5 million.

Many of these staffers wore red T-shirts to the most recent school board meeting, each with a stark message: “School social workers save lives.”

Also slated for elimination are 17 positions for therapeutic counselors who work specifically with immigrant families.

First to go?

Students have spent years advocating for more mental health resources in their schools.

After the murder of George Floyd touched off a nationwide reckoning over policing, many students asked the county to remove campus officers and invest in more counselors, social workers and psychologists.

When county officials ultimately decided to remove school resource officers from campuses, those students expected that additional mental health support would follow — and remain.

Danielle Blocker, an advocate who was among those calling for change, said this year’s budgetary choices signal to her a shift in priorities.

“At a time when health care and mental health care is less accessible to more people, it’s also being cut from the school,” she said. “This is going to hurt the people who have the least access to outside resources the most.”

Taylor said personnel cuts are impossible to avoid in the coming school year because of a tough budget season.

“These are difficult fiscal times, and the recommendations before the board reflect the challenging balance we must strike between limited resources and the needs of our students,” López said.

The County Council recently adopted a $7.9 billion operating budget, nearly half of which will flow to the public school system.

The budget will provide the district with $143 million more than it received in the current fiscal year, but it falls tens of millions of dollars short of the number Taylor said was necessary.

Chloe Laven found out her job was in jeopardy about two weeks after re-signing her lease in Rockville.

Laven spent the year working as a psychology intern while wrapping up graduate school. She was thrilled to get a full-time offer with MCPS.

“All of my paperwork went through about a month ago,” she said. Now she worries that, with no seniority, she could be one of the people cut.

She’s well aware of the district’s tough financial circumstances, which have been exacerbated by steep inflation and declining enrollment. Still, she said the work of school psychologists remains essential, as so many children struggle with anxiety, bullying and other mental health issues.

“There might be less students overall,” she said, “but the need for the services that we provide is increasing.”