We, the undersigned Early Childhood Special Education (ECSE) school psychologists of LAUSD, submit this petition to urgently address the growing and unsustainable workload demands placed upon our role. It is evident the district needs to hire more school psychologists to meet the rise in demand of preschool intake assessments.

Current practice in LAUSD has created a backlog of children and families waiting to be assessed with the district not meeting mandated state and federal timelines leaving the district open to mass lawsuits from parents.

The District’s current workload expectations do not align with the established time allowances required to complete mandated responsibilities. The agreed-upon estimate for completing a full psychoeducational assessment—from intake to finalized report—is 8 hours, based on Saturday Z-time provisions. However, this estimate does not account for critical additional duties such as:

1. Commuting and conducting secondary observations for every preschool student being assessed.
2. Administering and scoring supplemental protocols required by teachers.
3. Logging services, attending mandated trainings, participating in professional development, and department meetings on the same day as an assessment and not having the time to complete the case. 
4. Taking on additional case preparation in advance of the assessments, due to the TSF positions being reduced and calling them into other IEP meetings. Assessments  are now less team oriented and more driven and organized by the psychologists. 
5. Allowing for lunch breaks on days where three contacts are scheduled. 
6. Under last year's, psychologists may be assigned five assessments per week, which alone totals 40 hours based on the 8-hour-per-assessment standard. Additionally, we were assigned up to five IEPs per week, with each requiring an average of 2 hours to prepare and complete. This is an additional 10 hours per week allocated for IEP’s.  

However, despite of years of trying to advocate for support from Psychological Services and ECSE in Article XXX meetings, we were told today that we are now expected to complete 6 assessments and 6 IEPS per week!

The previous responsibility of 5 assessments a week alone, not including additional tasks, already exceed the available 40-hour workweek, leaving no protected time for observations, collaboration with service providers, teacher communication, or legally mandated documentation, or a mandated lunch break.

Furthermore, appointment expectations have steadily increased. What was previously understood to be a manageable load of four assessments and four IEPs per week (eight total appointments a week on a 5 day work week) has now escalated to nine or even ten appointments weekly.

The justification, in the past, was to overbook and schedule 9-10 cases per week in certain parts of the discrict that frequently had families that did not show up.  This allowed for possible no-shows and to ensure the target of 4 assessments and 4 IEP’s. Currently, when a  no-show occurs, we are immediately reassigned another case without sufficient time for preparation, and without acknowledgment of the preparation already invested in the original student. 

This pace is neither sustainable nor conducive to defensible practice. In order to keep up, many of us are working through lunch, after contracted hours, and well beyond the 40-hour workweek. Despite these efforts, student timelines are increasingly at risk of being missed, as psychologists must prioritize completing legally required assessment components—observations, protocols, teacher interviews, and documentation—before IEPs may proceed.

To ensure ethical, defensible, and high-quality services to our students and families, we respectfully request the following:

Assessment and IEP appointments to be capped at four each per full workweek (total of eight), consistent with prior expectations.

1. A maximum of 6 appointments for each school psychologist on a 5-day workweek, with no more than 3 of those 6 appointments to be scheduled as assessments. Additional appointments to include assessments, IEPs, observations, case review meetings, and mandatory Psychological Services PDs.

Observations should not be counted as IEP appointment slots as they involve far more than 2 hours, and they comprise multiple components including travel, teacher interviews, scoring rating scales, and formal documentation to synthesize all information into a defensible report that justifies eligibility. As such, they should be counted as assessments. 

On professional development days for Psychological Services, psychologists should be assigned one or two IEP‘s during the morning hours. No new psycho-educational assessment should be assigned as  psychologists will not have time to complete that case if they are participating in an afternoon professional development. Upon return to work the following day, they are assigned full duties and this is causing a backlog of reports to write.

We are committed to our students, families, and the integrity of our profession. However, without reasonable workload expectations, burnout is inevitable, morale in the department is at an all-time low, cases are backing up which will open the door to due process liabilities and the quality of services will continue to decline. We seek collaboration and support in establishing a workload structure that is both realistic and aligned with legally and ethically defensible practice.

Respectfully,
ECSE School Psychologists