Students line up as they return to school in Durham County. (File: NC Newsline)
When a mental health crisis strikes a classroom in Hyde County Schools, a school psychologist does not walk down the hall.
There isn’t one.
Instead, administrators begin a series of phone calls to outside providers or neighboring districts. Then, they wait.
“We are provided those services by somebody that we call in, but that’s not always easy,” said Melanie Shaver, superintendent of Hyde County Schools. “They have a very set schedule. And when you do have a crisis, which you do, we really rely on other districts to help us out.”
Between the 2020–21 and mid-2024–25 school years, 14 North Carolina districts have operated without a staff psychologist, according to data provided by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction.
Districts contract with outside providers to meet legal requirements for special-education evaluations. But students still lack consistent access to a psychologist for ongoing mental health support, including preventive care.
In practice, students in crisis may sometimes wait hours or days for help.
School district leaders cite funding constraints and a statewide shortage of school psychologists, a problem that hits rural districts hardest, where many have no full-time staff and lack the resources to compete with larger, wealthier districts.
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A 2025 School-Based Mental Health Plan report found that more than half of school leaders cited insufficient staffing as the biggest barrier to student safety. The report described mental health services in many districts as “reactive rather than systematic,” with schools responding to crises instead of preventing them.
School psychologists are the only school-based professionals trained to conduct legally required special-education evaluations while also providing preventive mental health services. They are part of a broader support network that includes counselors, social workers and nurses.
“When your only access to a school psychologist is someone who appears once a week or twice a month, you lose the preventative and consultative work they’re also trained to provide,” said Deirdre Martyn, president of the North Carolina School Psychology Association. “You’re only putting out fires.”
Most of the districts without psychologists are clustered in rural northeastern North Carolina, where high-poverty communities overlap with limited mental health infrastructure. Along with Hyde County, the districts include Cherokee, Gates, Granville, Hertford, Mitchell, Northampton, Warren and Washington counties, as well as the city systems in Hickory, Roanoke Rapids, Weldon, Clinton and Elkin.
National guidelines recommend one school psychologist for every 500 students. In North Carolina, the ratio is closer to one for every 1,928 students. Even in districts that have psychologists on staff, many are split across multiple schools.
Martyn said that was her experience working in a rural North Carolina county, where she rotated among three schools spread miles apart.
“On the days I was in a school building, my time was almost entirely consumed by legally required evaluations,” she said. “I would test five or six students and then leave to write reports on another day, which makes it very difficult to build relationships with students and families or to provide the comprehensive, preventative services schools need.”
“We are almost four times the recommended level,” said Michelle Ries, president and CEO of the North Carolina Institute of Medicine. “Regardless of whether a district has a psychologist or not, those we do have are overwhelmed.”
For North Carolinians aged 10 to 17, suicide is now the third-leading cause of death, Ries noted. “When you don’t have psychologists who are able to recognize early signs,” she said, “you put kids more at risk.”
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The absence of psychologists creates ripple effects across schools, said Leigh Kokenes, who also represents NCSPA. Without psychologists to conduct behavior assessments or develop prevention plans, that work often falls to teachers and social workers who are already stretched thin, Kokenes said.
“In our rural communities across North Carolina, where many times there are no school psychologists in schools, the mental health needs of children remain untreated,” Kokenes said. “Triage occurs and the gaps are filled in the moment, but the root cause will not be resolved without comprehensive care over time.”
And without a specialist to guide intervention, discipline often becomes the default response, she said.
The 2025 state report found that staffing shortages have reduced schools’ ability to make referrals and provide consistent follow-up. When mental health teams are missing key members, students often lose continuity of care — the person who evaluates a child one week may not be there to follow up the next.
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Patrick Miller, former superintendent of Greene County Schools, said his district went three years without a psychologist. “The person we worked with was excellent, but she served multiple districts,” Miller said. “We had to get in line. If something urgent came up, you were at the mercy of her schedule.”
Contracting was also more expensive, he said, and more limited. “You get assessments. You don’t get the full role. Kids don’t stop needing support because the contract hours are over.”
For Hyde County, that arrangement means relying on mobile crisis units for mental health emergencies, Shaver said, with responses typically arriving within the day. Students who need ongoing care are referred to outside agencies or primary care providers.
The district budgets about $80,000 a year for contracted psychological services, she said, and completes special education evaluations within the required 90-day window.
In Weldon City Schools, Superintendent Tammy Boone relies on partnerships that bring private providers onto campus daily. She described the arrangement as a stopgap until the district can secure funds for a full-time staffer.
Recruitment adds another challenge. Compared with larger, wealthier districts that can offer salary supplements to attract and retain talent, rural districts with smaller tax bases rely largely on grant funding, especially now that federal funding has expired.
“Sometimes it can be a challenge to attract people to this area, especially when there are so many other larger areas that border us,” Boone said.
A majority of districts surveyed in the 2025 state report cited inadequate funding as their primary issue.
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Shaver said Hyde County faces the same hurdle. “We don’t have maybe some of the sign-on bonuses or supplements that other counties have that tend to help recruit,” Shaver said.
But that may soon change.
In the 2026-27 school year, the district expects to have a staff psychologist for the first time in years.
Kathryn Oneal Brown, a longtime special education teacher in Hyde County, decided to pursue the role herself. “It’s nice to have someone who really knows a student and can do a comprehensive evaluation … versus someone just coming in, giving a test, and then that’s their limited interaction with the student,” Brown said. “I think just, you know, better data.”
In 2023, she enrolled in a virtual graduate program through Eastern Washington University, driving to neighboring counties on Fridays for unpaid practicum work. “I wouldn’t have been able to do this if there was no virtual option,” Brown said.
State lawmakers are now trying to expand that pathway. During the 2025 legislative session, legislators introduced Senate Bill 259, a $20.4 million proposal that would provide monthly salary supplements for school psychologists and fund a virtual training program at Appalachian State University.
But the 2025 state report warns that without a shift toward sustained, recurring funding, any progress made by such initiatives could be short-lived.
Meantime, Boone’s district is seeking grant funding for a full-time school psychologist.
“Everything in North Carolina tends to be a funding issue,” said Boone.
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