DENVER (KDVR) — The Colorado Department of Education began tracking how many licensed psychologists are in each school district during the 2021-22 academic year.
Most have none. There are 185 districts in Colorado, and 125 have zero licensed psychologists.
However, this does not mean that most Colorado students are without access to in-school mental health professionals. The schools without licensed psychologists mostly have 2,000 or fewer students apiece.
All told, there are 70,000 K-12 students who do not have a mental health professional in their school – roughly 8% of Colorado’s entire K-12 enrollment.
In most of the districts that do have licensed psychologists, there are generally between 1,000 and 1,500 students for each of them.
There are 60 districts with school psychologists in varying numbers, including each of the large districts in the Denver metro area.
Denver Public Schools, which is the state’s most-attended district, also has the most psychologists in the state. There are 167 licensed psychologists in DPS.
Douglas County, Cherry Creek, Jefferson County and Adams-Arapahoe 28J districts have the second most with 81, 77, 77 and 46 licensed psychologists, respectively.
Littleton schools have the lowest ratio of students to psychologists, with 429 K-12 students per mental health professional. Denver schools have the next best with 570 students per psychologist.
Among the 20 largest districts as a whole, there are an average of 1,000 students per licensed psychologist.