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Smith, who started work at Bard High School Early College DC in Southeast Washington last fall while completing his degree, said he鈥檚 now doing the same 鈥渘oble鈥� work that his mother did: serving as a school social worker.

And thanks to a Howard program that aims to place social work students in schools in hopes that they鈥檒l work there full-time when they graduate, others are doing similar work. In the program鈥檚 first two years, 22 second-year master鈥檚 students have been placed in schools in the nation鈥檚 capital to increase and diversify the school social work labor force, especially where they are needed the most.

It鈥檚 called Project PRESS, which stands for Preparing Responsive and Effective School Social Workers. And the pilot program addresses a pressing need: a shortage of social workers in schools both in D.C. and nationwide.

When Project PRESS started in 2023, there were 95 school social worker vacancies in D.C. public schools, said Sandra Jeter, an assistant professor of social work at Howard, at a panel about the project in December. And according to the School Social Work Association of America, no state in the union meets the recommended benchmark of one social worker for every 250 students.

Jeter, who launched Project PRESS with a five-year, $2.6 million federal grant, said social work programs at other universities could establish similar efforts to address the nationwide shortage of school social workers.

鈥淚 think PRESS can definitely be a model or just be an organization that offers this training to different universities that are developing social workers, whether they have a school social work focus or not,鈥� Jeter said. 鈥淚 think any university can adopt this model or work with me on expanding the model.鈥�

Intensive training

Project PRESS aims to motivate social work students to do something many of their predecessors have decided not to do: work in schools.

鈥淭he Project PRESS program is a really exciting thing to see to get students excited about the school social work profession,鈥� said Allie Perez, a representative of the School Social Work Association of D.C.

This yearlong program puts Howard social work students through two weeks of intensive training before they are placed at one of 11 participating schools. Students in the program receive a $10,000 stipend to ease some of the financial stresses of placement in a city school.

Social workers have different responsibilities than counselors and school psychologists. School social workers tend to work with specific students for long periods of time and create treatment or action plans.

鈥淲e do the mental health support, but we also take a more systemic view and we really focus on connecting people to resources and helping them remove barriers to those resources,鈥� Perez said.

School counselors are more likely to focus on academic and career development compared to school social workers that are helping students with socio-emotional challenges.

A school psychologist has the ability to diagnose students and perform psychosocial assessments, Jeter said.

The services that a school social worker provides, especially to underserved students, have a trickle-down effect on how a student performs, said Gloria Cain, an assistant professor at Howard鈥檚 School of Social Work and a faculty member with Project PRESS.

鈥淪ocial work is a discipline that really focuses on individuals within the context of their environment,鈥� Cain said.

The need

Project PRESS focuses on sending students to D.C.鈥檚 Wards 7 and 8, historically Black and low-income areas located south of the Anacostia River.

Jeter said she believes these areas not only lack investment from the city but lack support rooted in the Black perspective that focuses on issues and trauma people often experience in majority Black and low-income communities.

The program focuses on culturally responsive training, which prepares program participants to engage with different student populations. It also teaches trauma-informed training, which promotes awareness of the systemic and individual trauma students carry with them so the student is not retraumatized.

Racist incidents, poverty, food insecurity and homelessness are just some of the traumas students can carry with them that impact their performance in school. A main goal of the program is to interrupt these factors and use education as a gateway to success, Cain said.

Kyaus Washington, a 2024 graduate of Howard鈥檚 master鈥檚 of social work program, said it鈥檚 important for social workers to know when students have experienced such traumas.

鈥淭raumatic events happen to people and whenever you kind of understand that and try to understand from the person鈥檚 perspective, then you鈥檙e able to kind of tailor your modality to be effective based on the traumatic experience,鈥� Washington said.

Washington works as a school-based expansion clinician at Lorraine H. Whitlock Elementary School in Ward 7. He noted negative experiences with therapists and the nation鈥檚 long history of medical racism can lead to a sense of relief when a young Black student sees a Black social worker.

鈥淧eople automatically have this shared sense of community with each other,鈥� Washington said. 鈥淚f they see, you know, me, a Black man walking into the school, my Black male students could automatically connect with me from that one shared identity.鈥�