Apache Junction's social work positions at risk as pandemic relief funds expire

As the last round of federal pandemic relief funding dries up, social worker positions are at risk in Apache Junction schools.

At a Jan. 23 Apache Junction Unified School District meeting, the governing board approved eliminating about a dozen positions for the 2024-25 school year. The list, which was not made public, was mainly made up of social workers and instructional coaches, according to district spokesperson Nicki Bosch.

Those individuals were hired with the third and final round of the federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief fund, which was granted two years ago to address the impacts of COVID-19 and is set to expire in September 2024.

The positions were intended to support kids as they came back from the pandemic and transitioned to in-person learning, as well as to help with chronic truancy and to catch them up academically, Bosch said.

The district is facing a “significant funding challenge” as ESSER dollars expire, Bosch wrote in a statement. She added that the situation “directly impacts employees who were hired under the understanding that their employment was contingent” on the funding.

The district has applied for two grants to continue to fund the social worker positions but has not heard back yet, Bosch said. It’s anticipating a response in March, she said.

Lead social worker, board member oppose decision

The decision to cut all of the district’s social workers drew opposition from the district’s lead social worker, Emily Phares. She told the board Tuesday that social workers are the first responders when students experience a crisis.

"If we approve the elimination of social workers, who fills that void?" she asked the board.

“Students cannot learn to their potential when barriers go unresolved,” Phares said. “When teachers and staff are struggling with student behavior … it is our social workers who directly work in the trenches to address these concerns.”

She told the board that in the first semester of this school year, the district’s social workers collectively made 27 calls to the Department of Child Safety, 23 calls to a mobile crisis team for students who were a danger to themselves or others and 617 phone calls to families of students who were missing school to improve their attendance.

The social workers also connected 576 students and their families with outside resources like mental health, food and housing; created and implemented 61 attendance intervention plans and supported campuses through deaths of students, parents and staff members, she told the board.

The decision to cut social workers was also opposed by board member Bobby Bauders.

At the beginning of the governing board meeting, he asked to pull the “Reduction in Force” list from the consent agenda, a slate of typically non-controversial matters that get voted on all at once without discussion. His request was denied with a 3-2 vote.

That led to a tense conversation between him and board President Dena Kimble. He said that requiring a vote to remove an item from the consent agenda is against “the proper rules of order,” and Kimble said that “when an item is pulled off the agenda, you have to vote to have the agenda amended.”

“That’s not correct,” Bauders said. “That’s never how it’s been.” Kimble rejected that assertion.

Ultimately, the list was not pulled from the consent agenda. It was approved 4-1, with Bauders opposed and board member Cami Garcia approving it but saying that she would have liked to have a discussion about the social workers and hopes the district will find a way to keep them.

Bauders said in an interview that he had wanted to schedule budget work sessions to try to save the social worker positions and to have the opportunity to tell the public that the district had applied for grants.

He believes social workers are “not optional," he said. He attended the district from kindergarten through 12th grade when the schools did not have social workers, and he saw his classmates "slipping through the cracks, having … emotional emergencies," he said.

“They didn’t have anyone to take care of that,” Bauders said. “They just got sent to the office, and the office staff dealt with it.”

Bauders added that social workers provide legally mandated counseling for some students and are ingrained in how the district supports kids. His understanding, he said, is that without the social worker positions, there would be no other dedicated positions to do the jobs they are doing full-time.

“Traditionally, this has been handled by teachers,” he said. “That’s just not the teacher’s job," nor do they receive the same training as social workers, he added.

Apache Junction is not the only district considering cuts to social worker positions as federal pandemic relief funds expire.

In November, the Dysart Unified School District governing board voted to eliminate social worker positions, all funded by ESSER, after the 2023-24 school year.

Madeleine Parrish covers K-12 education. Reach her at mparrish@arizonarepublic.com.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: More Arizona school social workers at risk as pandemic relief expires