Faced with an incredible amount of students to assist, school district counselors are relying more and more on service-oriented high schoolers, college students and nonprofits to help them advise youth in need of career orientation and emotional support.
After Morgan Hill Unified School District budget cuts laid off three of the nine counselors working at Live Oak and Ann Sobrato high schools and at Britton and Martin Murphy middle schools, the remaining six say there are too few of them to go around to provide the critical advising that students need to face high school life and the post-graduation world.
They also say they have to prioritize their paperwork and work unpaid overtime.
By the counselors' union, the Morgan Hill Federation of Teachers, contract, there should be at least a counselor for every 700 students - and that number is inefficient enough as it is, the counselors say. California Association of School Counselors Executive Director Loretta Whitson said the national recommended caseload is one counselor for every 250 students.
But at Sobrato High School, the recent layoffs made for caseloads approaching 800 each for the two counselors there.
"We're so busy bogged down in paperwork," said Andrea Bird, Sobrato's counseling department head. "There's a lot we'd like to do. Peer mediation, conflict management, drug and alcohol, social issues - but we're so busy getting caught up on the mandatory paperwork that we can't do yet ... all those wonderful, cool things."
It's the same old money game district officials are always playing: trying to meet standards that the state sets but doesn't allocate money to meet, longtime Live Oak High School counselor Tim McGuire said.
Assistant Superintendent Jay Totter said the district expected a $1 million cut in restricted funds, such as Assembly Bill 1802 which paid for the additional counselors, this year. The bill paid for the three counselors, and after receiving word from the state they wouldn't be getting this money this year, the three 1802-funded counselors were laid off, Totter said. The state budget is almost three months overdue, so whether the funding will be back soon is unknown.
"We believe counseling is an essential service for the district," Totter said when asked if Morgan Hill Unified officials believe counseling is important. He declined to comment further.
Further, Totter said the union addresses a districtwide, not school-by-school, counselor levels, and that the district is still in line with the 700 to 1 ratio outlined in the contract.
Whitson said there are two main caveats under the 2006 bill that at first provided funding to the district. The law requires that every student receives one individual counseling session each year and that at-risk students receive even more personalized attention.
But now the money's gone for the additional staff but the added work remains, McGuire said.
McGuire said he's used to it. He said that each year, counselors just ride the waves as new budgets are adopted and, yes, counselors get caught in the undertow often. But he's learned to just roll with the punches and be adaptable, he said.
The counselors say they'd like to get to know their students. They'd like it if they knew a student's name when he or she walked into their office to fret about college applications, talk about a bad night at home with alcoholic parents or any of the myriad other problems that counselors could be - and often are - confronted with each day.
"The student I just finished talking to had definite home issues and is requiring personal counseling," said Elena Hernandez, the lone counselor at Britton Middle School, on a recent Tuesday afternoon. "You can't do personal counseling with a caseload of 700-plus unless it's crisis intervention."
And even then, they have to refer calls to local nonprofits like Community Solutions for the types of situations that many counselors are drawn to the field to address.
"When you first start counseling, it's very idealistic," Hernandez said. "You think you're going to be able to work with student groups, grief, divorce, anger management, parenting - those are the kinds of things. But from all the things on your desk ... It's just not something that happens. You have to make time for it."
In the meantime, they're shuffling volunteers and prioritizing tasks to get everything done and still be able to deal with the influx of walk-in students each day.
Bird said they've recruited a San Jose State University student who is studying to become a counselor to intern at Sobrato. The student will oversee a peer-to-peer mediation program. Also, Associated Student Body members will act as couriers, delivering information to students on behalf of the counseling department.
McGuire said that of the 36 school weeks in the year, almost half are taken up by registration paperwork. And there's no way he can get to know each and every one of the nearly 700 students in his caseload.
"If I meet with each (of the 1,400) students for 30 minutes - you do the math," he said.
At one point, McGuire said he knew the name of every senior at Live Oak. That was about five years ago - when the district and state allowed enough money for four counselors at the high school.
Natalie Everett
Natalie Everett Natalie Everett is the education and city reporter for The Times. Reach her at (408) 779-4106, ext. 201, or neverett@morganhilltimes.com.
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