The School Psychologist as a Community Psychologist: Practice at a Structural Turning Point

School psychologists implementing multi-tiered systems of support are already practicing community psychology, often without the theoretical vocabulary to recognize and extend what they are doing. This paper maps eight community psychology principles onto school psychology practice, with specific implications for consultation, prevention, threat assessment, community trauma response, and practitioner actions available within existing district structures. School psychology confronts converging crises: a student-to-practitioner ratio exceeding 1,065:1, accelerating adolescent mental health need, and contraction of federal IDEA and Section 504 enforcement, at a scale where individual assessment and eligibility determination cannot function as the primary professional response. Community psychology provides not a foreign framework but a theoretical account of what the profession has endorsed for seven decades without being structurally positioned to practice. The compliance architecture that foreclosed the expanded role has meaningfully shifted, making the community psychology framework more structurally available than at any point in the preceding fifty years. A case illustration demonstrates community-informed practice across ecological levels. Specific Monday Morning actions are developed for elementary, secondary, and under-resourced settings.