Jim Thorpe Area School District hired Victoria Benak as its districtwide crisis counselor Wednesday night at a salary of $50,676.

Superintendent Robert Presley said the counselor’s first-year salary will be paid for out of a $132,000 Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency grant received by the district.

“That was always our goal for this money was to bring in a licensed therapist as a crisis counselor,” Presley said. “It is needed. There are not a lot of services around like that for our students. An actual licensed therapist as a crisis counselor would be huge for our students.”

The original plan was to fund two years of the counselor’s salary with the grant money, but the dollars did not hit district coffers until late February and it has to be spent by the end of the 2023-24 school year.

According to the U.S. Center for Disease Control, more than 1 in 3 high school students experienced poor mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic and nearly half of students felt persistently sad or hopeless.

“Even before the disruption, isolation, and trauma of the pandemic, youth rates of anxiety and depression, and other mental health challenges were on the rise, and too many students suffered in silence,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona.

“Mental health and wellness have profound implications for our students, their academic success, and their overall outcomes, and we know that youth facing mental health challenges are more likely to receive services in a school-based setting.”

While it was able to lock down a crisis counselor, Jim Thorpe is still looking for a school psychologist.

“The Carbon Lehigh Intermediate Unit is going to provide us with some support in the meantime, but I don’t have a definitive timeline on when that will begin,” Sandra Michalik, Jim Thorpe special education director, said.

Presley said psychologist positions are among the most difficult to fill in public schools.

“There are quite a few districts around here also looking.,” he said. “There just is not a lot of them out there. We had one applicant who then ended up taking another job.”