Teacher having trouble connecting with “negative” student

Q: I consider myself an empathetic person, and I genuinely like kids. But there is one 5th-grade student who is pushing all my buttons. I expected kids to come back after months of virtual learning with some behavioral and attentional deficits. I was prepared for them to have less stamina, maybe some anxiety or depression. I don’t need them to be perfect, or anything close to it. But this kid is relentlessly, obstinately, frustratingly negative. He does not smile. He won’t lift his pencil to do any work. He doesn’t even try to figure out what’s going on in class. 

When I ask him where he’s stuck, he just shrugs and says he can’t do it. He won’t engage in conversation or accept my help. I don’t think he cares that he’s totally checked out. He won’t even talk about the fact that he’s checked out. If he told me directly that he was struggling, I might feel more empathetic, but this kid makes it really, really easy to dislike him and give up on him. I did call home and spoke with his mom, who is quite lovely, by the way. She is raising him alone and having a lot of the same issues with him as I am. In fact, she was on the verge of contacting me for help because he so often refuses to get out of bed in the morning, and because there is a lot of tension at home when it comes to getting him to school.

I spoke to the school social worker, who basically said this kid was known last year as Mr. Negative, though to a lesser degree when he was attending school online, and that I should just do the best I can with him. He has no learning disabilities that I know of, by the way, so this isn’t about him being able to understand the material. And I’m not interested in being told I should “focus on the relationship,” because trust me, that hasn’t worked. And I’m really good at that part of teaching. What is my next step here?