The role of school counselors in your student’s development

The Idaho legislature is just finalizing the education budget for next school year. Often in years past, we heard of cuts to education. Some of the first things to go are usually extracurricular activities, sometimes art, sometimes music and band, and sometimes school counselors.

Eyewitness News anchor Todd Kunz wanted to see how important counselors are and what role they play in schools. He did research into the student-to-counselor ratio recommendation from the American School Counselor Association and went to a local high school to see if it’s being met.

Hillcrest High School in Ammon has a student population of 1,552.

“The problem is with so many students, it’s hard to reach all the kids that really need help,” said counselor Shauna Polson.

That is the everyday challenge of a school counselor. Hillcrest currently has three counselors and Polson is one of them.

“I want them to know that I know who they are and that I know something about them beyond the fact that they’re a student,” said Polson.

She has been a high school counselor for nine years and was a teacher before that. Polson understands the student-teacher relationship, but oftentimes the teacher cannot reach each student individually. Enter the counselor.

“As counselors, we are really advocates for the student. That’s our job,” said Polson.

Their job is often the go-between that holds together the relationship of teachers, students and parents. Then they help plan life after high school, and make sure current academics are on target with reaching those goals. Plus, there are usually personal and social issues to help the student maneuver.

Danielle Steo is a senior at Hillcrest. When she entered high school as a freshman, she said developing a relationship with her counselor was the last thing on her mind.

“Freshman year, I totally wasn’t thinking about that. I’m in high school now, you know. And then once I got older and realized that high school is going to end, I needed to know what I was going to do after, and counselors kind of helped me narrow the path and figure out what I’m going to do,” said Steo.

To reach students like Danielle, the American School Counselor Association recommends a student-to-counselor ratio of 250-to-1. It’s only a recommendation. Only three states meet that: New Hampshire, Vermont and Wyoming. As of the 2012-2013 school year, Wyoming is 224-to-1. Montana comes close at 315-to-1. Utah struggles at 691-to-1. Idaho’s state average is much the same at 628-to-1.

“I think we’ve got about 520 or 530 per counselor. So we are more than double the recommended ratio,” said Polson.

Some smaller schools may be able to meet the recommended ratio. But why not have more counselors when you have more students?

“I think it’s a matter of money and priorities, and if they don’t see it as a priority, it doesn’t get the money,” said Polson.

Based on enrollment, the state of Idaho provides every school the number of teaching positions and counselors come out of that pool of teachers.

“School counselors are vitally important to everything we do,” said Principal Doug McLaren. “Knowing how important our counselors are to the well-being of our student population, we try to balance that with class sizes. Because if we add another counselor, our class sizes go up a little bit, and so we’re always trying to find that great fine line between adding a counselor or a classroom teacher.”

“As I got closer to senior year, I realized what a key role they were,” said Steo.

And because of that, Steo has counseling words of her own for incoming freshmen, when it comes to school counselors.

“Get a personal relationship with them because it really helps. It really helps to know them and know their schedule and know when you can get in there and talk to them because it really comes in handy as you get older,” said Steo.

According to the state school counseling mandates and legislation, school counseling is mandated for grades kindergarten through 12 in Idaho. The same holds true for Wyoming. In Idaho, that mandate is funded by the state. In Wyoming, it is non-funded.