Christopher Peak Photo
Matthew Duncanson to officials: Students need access to counselors.
As Matthew Duncanson, a senior at the Engineering and Science University Magnet School (ESUMS), was finalizing his college applications last week, he found out that the counselor he’d asked to write his recommendation letter had abruptly departed.
ESUMS is now temporarily down to one counselor for all 600 students, exacerbating the district’s already limited staffing levels during a crucial admissions period.
Led by a contingent from ESUMS, students brought those concerns about understaffed guidance counseling to top administrators and two Board of Education members on Tuesday morning at a three-hour Citywide Student Council session held in Wilbur Cross’s library.
High schoolers from across the district said their counselors are spread thin, leaving them with little time to talk through emotions on a drop-in basis, address bullying or discuss long-term academic goals.
Interim Superintendent Reggie Mayo said the district has made a few hires and streamlined employees’ work over the last year. Still, he said, he wishes the district could hire more counselors, but that will be tough to do with the limited funds in next year’s budget.
Students from Metro compare their current school to their ideal school.
It wasn’t the first time that Mayo and the two school board members, Carlos Torre and Darnell Goldson, had heard students demanding far more counselors. A year ago, to the date, the two non-voting school board student representatives, Coral Ortiz (who has since graduated) and Jacob Spell, shared their concerns at a Board of Education meeting about a rotating, overextended staff that struggled to connect with students. As Spell said, “How can someone that barely knows me write a recommendation for me for college?” The board members asked for more data and suggested a few fixes, like using early-release days for counselors to meet with upperclassmen.
Students said they haven’t seen much change since then.
“That was actually part of our concern: We addressed it so much last year and, then, as this new year started, it was as if it was a clean slate. We kind of pretended those issues that were brought up last year didn’t exist,” Tom Nardini, an ESUMS sophomore, said at Tuesday’s student council meeting. “They weren’t addressed yet — until now, when we’ve had to bring them to light yet again.”
One of the board members agreed. “Your student representatives have brought up this guidance counseling issue, probably at every meeting, and I’m embarrassed to admit that we didn’t focus on it. They brought it up; we didn’t address it. That’s our fault,” said Goldson, one of the two elected members. “Having one guidance counselor in a school of 600, we’re not doing our jobs. We have to figure out a better way to do that. I promise you, as a member of the board, it will be a priority of mine when we do our next budget that we put some focus on guidance counselors.”
Students rated positives (on pink Post-Its) and negatives (on blue).
New Haven Public Schools currently employs 60 guidance counselors, only two of whom work part time, said Chaka Felder-McEntire, the lead counselor. That means each counselor is in charge of about 370 students. That’s far above the 250-to‑1 ratio that the American School Counselor Association (ASCA) recommends — a bar that the organization said only three states have met (Vermont, New Hampshire and Wyoming). Connecticut’s staffing ratio was roughly 465-to‑1 three years ago, ASCA found.
(Big caseloads are an issue throughout many departments, not just counseling, said Will Clark, the chief operating officer, from “special education to [English-language learning] to IT to security to social work to speech to nurses and to other areas.”)
At ESUMS, students said, that has now meant waits to see counselors.
“We’re at a point now, where as students you have to set up appointments. Like if you were going to the doctor’s office, you can’t just go in there, because there’s a line to wait,” Duncanson said. “As students, we should have immediate access to our school counselors, because they’re the keys to the next steps.”
After a counselor left mid-week, the school’s principal, Medria Blue-Ellis, has been helping to write recommendation letters, students said.
Even though they’re down an employee now, after the Board of Education accepted a resignation on Monday night, the rushed feeling in the counselors’ office is not a new problem, added Nardini.
“It was already difficult with two guidance counselors. There was a lack of availability; they weren’t very efficient,” he said. “Now we’re down to one. It’s just made it harder.”
Blue-Ellis declined to comment, saying it was “unconscionable” and “irresponsible” for a reporter to ask about ESUMS’s interim plans so soon after the counselor’s resignation.
Clark said the district’s human resources department is moving quickly to identify a replacement and may consider putting someone in the position part-time while interviews are underway.
At Tuesday’s student council meeting, Duncanson kicked off the discussion, and others chimed in about their experiences at other high schools. Tristan Walker, a sophomore at Career, said his classmates often have to go to three or four people to find someone available to talk. Even then, they might not be useful, he said.
Analys Rivera, a sophomore at Co-Op, said she’d personally experienced the same feeling when she sought emotional help from a counselor. “I felt like I was just getting written off and she was trying to push me off somewhere else,” she said. “I’m not the type to open up to people that much. I have somebody that I thought I could trust just say, ‘Well, maybe you should go to outside therapy, because I can’t really help you if your grades aren’t slipping.’ I’m a hard worker, but that doesn’t mean I always feel that way inside. The mental health of somebody is just as important as grades. It’s just as important. Somebody’s grades don’t reflect how they’re feeling and how they should be treated in the school system.”
On Post-It notes, student council members jotted down thoughts on the counseling program. Seven pink notes, with positives, said that counselors were helpful. “Involved,” one wrote. Others, on blue notes, said counselors had limited availability. “Busy,” one said. “Needs an assistant,” said another. Those students said understaffing prevented a deeper relationship and more timely discussion of their grades.
After hearing that feedback, Felder-McEntire told students she’d advocate for them and help them speak out. “I am not here to be doing things over and over repetitively. You’re only in high school for four years. No one has time to be doing this seven years down the road,” she said. “We’ll continue to circle back, and we’ll get better.”
Carlos Torre, Darnell Goldson and Reggie Mayo hear out concerns.
To fix the problem district-wide, Mayo said he hired new counselors at Hyde and Hillhouse last year, because those schools were so understaffed that they couldn’t get transcripts out to universities in time.
Funding from the state’s Alliance District program for under-performing districts funded online tools, like Khan Academy’s practice test program and Naviance’s planning tools, that improved test scores and college acceptance rates, Clark said.
Other faculty have also stepped up to fill in the gap, with athletic coaches tutoring and teachers editing college essays, he added. And a recent change in the teacher union contract that’s pending before the Board of Alders extends the work day, giving more flexibility to when students can meet with counselors.
Through the Alliance grant, Felder-McEntire and a volunteer team of six advisors also developed a curriculum pacing guide that schedules counselors’ extensive work, streamlining what they’re supposed to be doing month-by-month. She showed up at Tuesday’s meeting to check in about whether counselors are actually following the plan.
From a quick look at what student representatives reported, Felder-McEntire said counselors generally appeared to be on track with college and career readiness, helping gear up for the PSAT and SAT, holding information sessions about financial aid, putting on college and career fairs, and guiding students through early college applications. Counselors appeared to lag, however, in supporting student academics and personal relationships, she added.
“Yes, we are short on counselors,” Mayo told the students. Crediting his own high school guidance counselor in Richmond, Virginia, with getting him through college, he said he knew just how important their help could be.
“We know that there are a lot of needs out there, but at the same time, the money is not flowing,” he said, pointing out that the state’s rocky finances mean the school district won’t be seeing any influx of funds. “We are doing, with the resources that we have, the best we can at this time.”
Clark echoed him, saying that there’s much more he’d do if he had more money. “More resources are needed in a number of areas to support all students in reaching their fullest potential,” he said, but “within the context of the current budget realities with the state and federal government, it is clear that districts will continue to need to do more with less.”
Consider the following quotes from the above article:
"Yes, we are short on counselors," Mayo told the students.
"We know that there are a lot of needs out there, but at the same time, the money is not flowing," he said,
"We are doing, with the resources that we have, the best we can at this time."
Clark echoed him, saying that there's much more he'd do if he had more money. "More resources are needed in a number of areas to support all students in reaching their fullest potential," he said, but "within the context of the current budget realities with the state and federal government, it is clear that districts will continue to need to do more with less."
Here is the problem right in front of you.
There is not enough money for our kids to reach their potential.
I beg to differ gentlemen.
Take a pay cut.