Congratulations to Central Bucks School District member Julia Szarko for being named the 2021 School Psychologist of the Year at both the state and national levels. Throughout her 25-year career, Szarko has been a strong advocate for her students. She has worked tirelessly to meet students’ individual academic, behavioral, and social-emotional needs and push for improvements across the school system. She’s even taken her advocacy work to Congress.
This week is typically when members of the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) head to Washington DC for “DC Hill Day,” a week of advocacy training and Hill meetings with lawmakers. This year it's being held virtually, but that hasn’t slowed down Szarko.
“I’ve been very focused on, for a long time, expanding access to school mental health services,” Szarko said. “Also we are facing a huge national shortage of school psychologists. So our big advocacy focus is remedying the shortages.”
Szarko has been working with Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick to encourage passage of HR 4025, the Mental Health in Schools Excellence Program Act of 2019, which was reintroduced this year.
“That is a bill that would provide a funding stream for students going into school psychology and school mental health field,” Szarko said. “So it’s something where the federal government would match with the graduate institution’s direct funding towards tuition. We’re one of the states with the most school psychology programs,” she said. “So we could obtain a good number of students receiving funding through this bill if we can get it passed.”
