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Crystal Ochoa, the school’s psychiatric social worker, was excited to see how engaged the students were, especially because their school doesn’t offer music curriculum.

“There’s a lot of things that we need to do in preparing for a visit: Developing appropriate treatment plans. Writing letters for our clients ... They do not give us the time to do that,” said Lisa Delgadillo, a Kaiser psychiatric social worker in Fontana.

Unified program, approved and funded by the Board of Education in 2021, added school staff including a psychiatric social worker, an attendance counselor, a parent or community representative and an academic counselor specifically to help Black students, who make up 7% of the district’s 410,000 students.

Deneffy says he asked his school’s “psychiatric social worker” sometime in the fall of ninth grade if she could get him professional mental health counseling.

Santana, born in upstate New York, had recently given up a career as a psychiatric social worker when she fell in love with Spanish dance and went to Spain to study.