St. Mary’s Schools Face Student Support Staffing Gaps as Social Worker Funding Expires

LEONARDTOWN, Md. — St. Mary’s County Public Schools officials say the district remains below recommended staffing levels for several key student support positions as federal pandemic-era grants expire and local funding pressures continue to mount.

A March 4 presentation by Jeffrey DiRenzo, director of student services, outlined staffing levels for school counselors, pupil personnel workers (PPW), school psychologists and school social workers, which further explained how social worker positions are at risk without additional local funding. 

School Counselors

According to the presentation, St. Mary’s County Public Schools (SMCPS) currently has 48 counselors serving 16,581 students, a ratio of 1 counselor for every 345 students. The American School Counselor Association recommends a ratio of 1 to 250, and DiRenzo said SMCPS would need 18 additional counselors at an annual cost of about $1.8 million to meet that benchmark. 

School Psychologists

St. Mary’s County currently has 14 school psychologists, or about one for every 1,184 students, compared with the National Association of School Psychologists’ recommended ratio of one psychologist for every 500 students. Meeting that standard in St. Mary’s County would require 18 additional psychologists at an estimated annual cost of $1.8 million, according to DiRenzo. 

Pupil Personnel Workers

Pupil personnel workers (PPW) were closer to the state recommendations. The district reported a pupil personnel worker-to-student ratio of about 1 to 1,950, which is near the Maryland state recommendation of one PPW for every 2,000 students. 

Superintendent Dr. Scott Smith said that figure looks better on paper than it does in practice because two PPWs are dedicated to Lexington Park Elementary School and George Washington Carver Elementary School. 

“It is important to note that two dedicated pupil personnel workers are assigned to Lexington Park Elementary School and George Washington Carver Elementary School,” Smith said, noting that Blueprint funding supports schools with higher concentrations of economically disadvantaged students.

Smith said that leaves 6.5 PPWs to serve the district’s remaining schools, which means the effective workload is higher than the systemwide ratio suggests.

Social Workers And Grant Funding

The largest concern centered on school social workers, many of whom were added through temporary grant funding in the years following the COVID-19 pandemic. The presentation indicated that the district currently has 14 school social workers, nearly all of them grant-funded, for a ratio of one to 1,184 students. 

The recommended ratio is one school social worker for every 250 students. That benchmark is supported by the School Social Work Association of America, which reported in its 2024 National School Social Worker Census that no state currently meets the standard. The report also found Maryland’s average ratio to be one social worker for every 2,324 students. According to SMCPS staff, the district would need 66 positions to meet the recommended level, at an estimated annual cost of more than $6.6 million.

District officials said six school social worker positions will become unfunded with the expiration of the Stronger Connections Grant for the 2026-27 school year, while four more are affected by a reduction in STOP grant funding. To maintain the district’s current staffing level of 14 social workers, SMCPS would need an additional $1 million in the general fund or would have to reduce 10 certificated full-time positions elsewhere in the system, according to the presentation. 

The Stronger Connections Grant was created through the 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which provided $1 billion nationwide through Title IV, part A of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act for school safety and student support programs. Maryland received about $17 million through the program. All funds must be spent by June 30, 2026, for states and U.S. territories. 

The STOP grant is administered through the St. Mary’s County Health Department, which receives funding from the Maryland Department of Health’s Substance Abuse Treatment Outcomes and Partnerships program. The health department distributes portions of the grant to partner agencies, including St. Mary’s County Public Schools, while other funds support services such as behavioral health programs within the county’s corrections division. 

“I just want to be clear, we are a subrecipient on the STOP grant,” Smith said. “The St Mary’s County Health Department is the actual driver of the grant, and they receive additional funding beyond what’s provided for school social work, so that they can provide community services and services with the correctional office.”

The Student Services Framework

DiRenzo told the board the district’s student services framework relies on those four roles working in tandem — school counselors, pupil personnel workers, school psychologists and school social workers — that address different aspects of student needs, from academic guidance and attendance support to mental health services and crisis intervention. 

“These positions form the essential framework of comprehensive student support that enables children to thrive academically, emotionally, socially and behaviorally,” the presentation stated.

Smith said the district has aggressively pursued outside funding to build those services, particularly school social work, and pointed to a timeline that began with a pilot social worker at Great Mills High School in 2016. The district later expanded social work staffing through the STOP grant in 2019, ESSER funding in 2021, the Stronger Connections grant in 2023 and concentration of poverty funding that added positions at Spring Ridge Middle School and George Washington Carver Elementary School. 

ESSER funding refers to the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund created through federal COVID-19 relief legislation. The funds were intended to help school systems address learning loss and student mental health needs following the pandemic.

District leaders said those grants were awarded in part because St. Mary’s County is designated as a health care shortage area and has elevated indicators tied to behavioral health, including mental health emergency department visits at twice the state goal, domestic violence incidents at about twice the state goal and high substance-use emergency department visits.

“Just be clear, this isn’t about the school system. This is about the county in which we live,” Smith said, referring to St. Mary’s County’s designation as a health care shortage area.

Smith said school systems across Maryland were encouraged to move toward Medicaid billing for some school-based mental health services, but he and other board members cautioned that reimbursement alone would not come close to replacing lost grant revenue.

“It would appear that there was legislation introduced and approved two years ago that emphasized the need for public schools to move to this billing model,” Smith said. “It would appear that was the driver behind the Maryland Department of Health substantially reducing the award to St. Mary’s County for the STOP grant that they informed us of in January.”

Smith said they are working with the health department to better understand the legislation and how it impacted the roles of SMCPS and the application processes for accessing those funds.

Board member Mary Washington said the board has received hundreds of emails about student services and redistricting and described school counselors, social workers, PPWs and psychologists as interconnected parts of the support system students need to learn.

“We need the social workers, the PPWs, all of these people, to help students, because if their mental and emotional health is not good, then it’s very difficult for them to learn,” Washington said. “Students come to school with all kinds of problems that you can’t even imagine.”

Staffing Trends In St. Mary’s County Public Schools

The staffing presentation also placed the student services discussion within a broader budget context. District figures show SMCPS has reduced 87 positions between fiscal 2024 and the proposed fiscal 2027 budget. Officials attributed those reductions to the end of federal and state pandemic funding, declining enrollment and rising costs affecting both state and local revenue. Of that total, 64.6 positions were restricted, or grant-funded, while 22.7 were unrestricted positions funded through the district’s general operating budget.

The staffing timeline presented to the board shows the largest single-year reduction came between fiscal 2024 and fiscal 2025, when restricted positions fell by 54.3. Another 2.2 restricted and 17.2 unrestricted positions were reduced in fiscal 2026, followed by a proposed reduction of 8.1 restricted and 5.51 unrestricted positions in fiscal 2027. 

Smith said that if St. Mary’s County Public Schools received the same per-pupil funding as neighboring Charles or Calvert counties, the district would have roughly $25 million more annually to support services like counseling, psychology and social work.

“If we had the same level of per-pupil funding as Charles or Calvert, we would have $25 million more in our budget recurring to be able to do all of these things,” Smith said.

The comparison underscored the district’s broader argument that staffing levels for student support services are closely tied to long-standing funding disparities between St. Mary’s County and neighboring school systems. Smith noted that as pandemic-era grants expire, staffing levels supported by those temporary funds are returning to levels closer to what the district maintained more than a decade ago.

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