The Story Of Lake Stevens School District
Lake Stevens School District understands the critical role
a school psychologist plays for both students with special
needs and general education students. The district is also
aware of the acute shortage of psychologists in the state
of Washington, and the rest of the country, and it worked
with various temp agencies to try to solve its shortage
issues. Administrators still weren’t entirely satisfied with
the clinical quality management they were receiving from
temp agencies so the district decided to look into other
options. This led them to PresenceLearning.
The district partnered with PresenceLearning to assist
with conducting psychoeducational assessments.
“Temp agencies weren’t able to provide as high quality
clinicians and didn’t have the clinical oversight like
PresenceLearning.
The clinical oversight was extremely
helpful.” said Miriam Tencate, executive director of special
services at Lake Stevens School District. “Previously, we
had to allocate scarce district resources to support temp
agency psychologists to bring them up to speed with our
state and district practices. In contrast, PresenceLearning
provides high quality, exceptional psychologists who are
able to integrate smoothly into the school environment,
conduct comprehensive evaluations, and have a good
understanding of our state’s special education laws. In
addition, they are able to navigate difficult conversations
with administrators, teachers, and parents.”
With PresenceLearning, the district has gained a
collaborative and consistent partner which is what they
were looking for and it has paid off for the district’s
schools. Lake Stevens High School has had the same
school psychologist from PresenceLearning for the past
three school years. That consistency has allowed both
staff and students to build stronger relationships with the
psychologist. It has also helped the school refine its own
practices.
“We weren’t aware that we had an issue with our
timeline for delivery of paperwork because we never
had a psychologist with us long enough to catch it,” said
Debra Hay, associate principal at Lake Stevens High
School. “It could’ve taken years to realize the problem if it
weren’t for our partnership with PresenceLearning. Our
PresenceLearning school psychologist was able to realize
the problem and bring it to our attention so we now
have a much stronger and more efficient system.”
The high school staff has realized the importance of
having an experienced school psychologist servicing the
school. “This has been a great learning experience and
we’ve readjusted our expectations on the role of a school
psychologist,” said Hay. “It has made an impact on our
school to have such a high quality school psychologist.”
The school psychologist works closely with staff to
provide ideas about interventions and discuss possible
solutions for each student. Although they are remote,
they are still able to participate in the intervention team
meetings and provide helpful insights.
Another reason Lake Stevens School District chose to
partner with PresenceLearning was because of the
company’s flexibility to adjust to, at any given time,
the on-the-ground staffing within the district. The
district is able to use PresenceLearning’s remote school
psychologists as needed to assist with evaluations and
sessions. This also reduced the workload for the onsite
school psychologists. “We’re able to assign cases the
same way as if the psychologist was in the building,” said
Tencate. “PresenceLearning comes in where they are
needed and does what needs to get done.”
