School Adjustment Counselor

Summit Academy – Therapeutic Day School

Position Overview

Summit Academy, the District’s therapeutic day school, is seeking a skilled, compassionate, and collaborative School Adjustment Counselor to support students with significant social-emotional, behavioral, and mental health needs.

The School Adjustment Counselor will serve as an integral member of Summit Academy’s multidisciplinary team, providing intensive therapeutic support that enables students to access instruction, strengthen self-regulation skills, maintain relationships, and make progress toward their individualized educational and treatment goals. The successful candidate will understand how trauma, mental health, disability, family circumstances, and other environmental factors may affect a student’s attendance, behavior, engagement, and academic performance.

This position requires a professional who can build trusting relationships with students and families, respond effectively during periods of crisis, and contribute to a structured, predictable, and supportive therapeutic learning environment.

Essential Responsibilities

Direct Student Support

• Provide individual and group counseling consistent with students’ Individualized Education Programs (IEPs), treatment plans, and identified social-emotional and behavioral needs.

• Develop and implement therapeutic interventions that strengthen emotional regulation, coping, communication, problem-solving, conflict-resolution, and relationship-building skills.

• Establish trusting, culturally responsive relationships with students while maintaining appropriate professional boundaries.

• Provide in-the-moment counseling, de-escalation, and crisis support when students experience emotional or behavioral distress.

• Conduct developmentally appropriate screenings, assessments, and risk evaluations, including assessments related to student safety, in accordance with District protocols and the counselor’s professional training and scope of practice.

• Collaborate with students to develop individualized coping, regulation, crisis-response, and safety plans.

• Support students as they transition into Summit Academy, return following hospitalization or an extended absence, or prepare to transition to a less restrictive educational setting.

• Help students identify and address barriers to attendance, engagement, academic progress, and successful participation in school.

Therapeutic and Behavioral Programming

• Contribute to a therapeutic school culture grounded in consistency, dignity, relationship-building, trauma-responsive practice, and high expectations for student growth.

• Work collaboratively with educators, behavioral staff, administrators, and related-service providers to understand the function of student behavior and develop effective interventions.

• Participate in the development, implementation, monitoring, and revision of behavior support plans, safety plans, re-entry plans, and other individualized interventions.

• Consult with classroom staff regarding trauma-responsive practices, regulation strategies, classroom supports, and effective responses to student behavior.

• Assist students with generalizing counseling and self-regulation skills across classrooms, community-based activities, and other school settings.

• Collect and review relevant student data to evaluate the effectiveness of counseling and behavioral interventions and recommend adjustments when needed.

Special Education and Student Support Team Responsibilities

• Participate actively in IEP Team meetings, student-support meetings, clinical consultation, and other multidisciplinary planning processes.

• Complete social-emotional assessments, progress reports, present-level statements, measurable annual goals, service-delivery recommendations, and other required documentation.

• Monitor and document students’ progress toward counseling-related IEP goals.

• Provide consultation regarding students’ social-emotional functioning and how mental health or environmental factors may affect educational access and progress.

• Collaborate with the IEP Team to determine appropriate supports, services, accommodations, and transition plans.

• Maintain timely, accurate, and confidential counseling records in accordance with federal and state law, DESE requirements, District procedures, and applicable professional standards.

Family and Community Collaboration

• Develop respectful, collaborative partnerships with parents, caregivers, and other individuals who support the student.

• Maintain regular communication with families regarding student progress, concerns, interventions, and strategies that may support consistency between home and school.

• Connect students and families with community-based mental health, social service, health care, housing, and other resources when appropriate.

• Coordinate, with appropriate authorization, with outside therapists, hospitals, state agencies, service providers, and other members of a student’s treatment team.

• Participate in discharge, re-entry, transition, and continuity-of-care planning following hospitalization, residential treatment, or other intensive services.

• Support families in understanding and navigating school-based services and community resources.

Schoolwide and Professional Responsibilities

• Participate in crisis response, threat-assessment, safety-planning, and mandated-reporting procedures consistent with District protocols and applicable law.

• Serve as a resource to staff regarding student mental health, trauma, crisis intervention, and social-emotional development.

• Attend staff meetings, professional learning, clinical supervision or consultation, and required District meetings.

• Work collaboratively and flexibly within a small therapeutic-school setting in which staff members share responsibility for student safety, engagement, and success.

• Protect student and family confidentiality while sharing information appropriately with staff who have a legitimate educational need to know.

• Demonstrate cultural humility and recognize the effects that identity, disability, race, language, culture, poverty, trauma, and systemic inequities may have on students and families.

• Perform other duties consistent with the role and responsibilities of a School Adjustment Counselor.

Required Qualifications

• Master’s degree in social work or counseling.

• Valid Massachusetts DESE license as a School Social Worker/School Adjustment Counselor, All Levels, or eligibility for an appropriate license or District-sponsored waiver as permitted by DESE.

Preferred Qualifications

• Current Massachusetts clinical license or credential, such as LCSW, LICSW, LMHC, LMFT, or LRC.

• Experience working in a therapeutic day school, substantially separate program, alternative school, residential program, or other intensive clinical or educational setting.

• Experience supporting students with trauma histories, anxiety, depression, emotional disabilities, school avoidance, behavioral dysregulation, or other complex mental health needs.

• Training in trauma-responsive care, crisis prevention and de-escalation, restorative practices, functional behavioral assessment, or evidence-based therapeutic interventions.

• Experience conducting student risk assessments and developing safety, stabilization, re-entry, or transition plans.

• Experience collaborating with families, hospitals, outpatient providers, state agencies, and community-based organizations.

• Experience providing special education counseling services and developing measurable IEP goals.

• Fluency in Spanish or another language spoken by District students and families.

 

Terms of Employment

• Full-time, school-year position

• Salary and benefits in accordance with the applicable Unit A collective bargaining agreement

• Reports to the Summit Academy Principal or designee

Equal Opportunity Statement

The District is committed to building a diverse, inclusive, and culturally responsive workforce. We strongly encourage applications from candidates whose backgrounds and experiences reflect the diversity of our students and families.

The District does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, genetic information, pregnancy or pregnancy-related condition, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by federal or state law.