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Pennridge social workers outline crisis response, McKinney‑Vento duties and community partnerships
Summary
School social workers described their roles in attendance interventions, crisis response, McKinney‑Vento homeless identification, foster‑care liaison work and community coordination; committee members pressed on social‑worker to student ratios and supports for family engagement.
Mr. Johnson introduced Pennridge’s three school social workers—Alicia Landgraf, Dawn Hoops and Joe Warner—who gave the curriculum committee a comprehensive overview of their duties and daily responsibilities.
Landgraf and colleagues said their four primary focus areas are school climate, social‑emotional supports, mental‑health interventions and academic advocacy. They described work on student attendance improvement plans, small‑group and individual interventions, crisis response and county coordination for mental‑health and homelessness resources.
On homelessness, staff explained McKinney‑Vento obligations: immediate enrollment, record transfers without usual paperwork, and an obligation to set up transportation within 3 days. "The idea of the act is, educational stability and least amount of missed school," a social‑work speaker said while describing McKinney‑Vento procedures.
Social workers also outlined community partnerships (county homeless liaison, children and youth services, local behavioral health, food and clothing providers) and external contracts the district uses for counseling (for example, Lakeside Crisis Counseling) to serve students who need more intensive or short‑term clinical support.
Committee members asked about caseloads and coverage. Staff estimated each social worker maintains an active caseload (students known to the social‑work team) of roughly 200 students and said much of the work is triage and ongoing coordination with counselors, teachers and outside providers.
Next steps: committee will continue to consider ways to bolster proactive programming (parent education nights, front‑office family engagement), and district leaders asked for community suggestions on how to expand supports without necessarily adding staff immediately.
