SPRING 2009
Vol. 3, No. 1

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School Counselors Juggle Large Client Loads, Mulitple Duties

SCHOOL COUNSELOR HERB CROWELL (M.S. ’99) starts his day at Minneapolis Washburn Senior High School at 7:45 a.m. From then on he juggles tasks such as sorting standardized tests or visiting classrooms to talk about career development. When he returns to his office, he may find a sobbing kid, worried about where to sleep that night or how to help a friend who is talking about suicide.

After calming those fears, Crowell may get called into an administrator’s office to discuss next year’s master schedule. Then, don’t forget about lunchroom duty.

“There’s never enough time in the day,” Crowell says. “I look up, and it’s 3 o’clock.”

Crowell is one of three counselors for the nearly 1,000 students at Washburn, and he admits it can be overwhelming. Grants and other financial assistance have helped Minneapolis Public Schools reduce the counselor-to-student ratio to about 300-to-1 districtwide. Statewide, however, the ratio is 799-to-1, meaning Minnesota has the second highest number of students assigned to each counselor in the country, according to the American School Counselors Association (ASCA). The organization suggests a ratio of 250-to-1.

But Minnesota doesn’t require schools to have counselors. They’re expensive, with the cost almost always borne by general funds, making them expendable if budget shortfalls arise. That means many schools go without, and students, counselors, and other educators pay the price.

It’s difficult to meet with students on a regular basis or even to meet them at all when ratios get too high, says Kay Herting Wahl, associate professor of counseling and student personnel psychology in the Department of Educational Psychology. As a result, students don’t get the help they need coping with problems or improving their study habits. “It’s going to have an impact all the way around,” she says.

Despite tough working conditions and limited positions, students still flock to the college’s programs that prepare school counselors. Herting Wahl says they are inspired by a strong commitment to children. “Most school counselors say they are overwhelmed with the demands of the job, [yet] they love working with the kids and see the need, so they keep at it,” she explains.

Ratios hurting students

With so many students to help, counselors can’t do as much as they would like—ideally guiding students to develop academic skills, plan for a career or college, and deal with social interactions.

“It doesn’t allow us to work with the kids in the depth you’d like to be able to work with them,” Crowell says. “At best we’re working with kids in very brief spurts of time and sporadically.”

Counselors may be stretched too thin to follow up with students’ parents to establish a plan that could help students improve their academic performance, says Jim Bierma, lead counselor in Minneapolis Public Schools, adjunct professor in the Department of Educational Psychology, and ASCA president. They also have a harder time connecting with students who are harming themselves, he says, or with those who need skills for dealing with conflicts, bullies, and other situations that come up in school and again later in life.

Students who go through the college’s school counseling program—a master’s degree or a licensure program for those who already have a relevant master’s—take specific classes that ready them for the challenges of this environment. These include general counseling strategies as well as in-depth courses related to typical issues for youth in the K–12 age range.

“It’s a wide spectrum of issues and strategies we teach as far as getting ready to work in the schools,” says Herting Wahl. Students also must gain field experience at the elementary, the middle-school, and the high-school levels before being eligible for licensure.

Impact on counselors

Many schools require counselors to handle a variety of duties, often unrelated to counseling. Administering discipline, monitoring hallways, and handling schedule changes all can be part of the job—a situation that Herting Wahl calls a misuse of resources.

“Schools hire trained counselors who have master’s degrees to take care of mental health and emotional help issues with children, and then they assign them tasks that a clerical person could do,” she says. “In these days of budget cuts and budget scrutiny that should be looked at very carefully, I would think.”

The time requirements and job juggling also lead to burnout and often cause counselors to quit their jobs or to quit trying to do the job the way they were trained, says Herting Wahl. She believes school districts lose as well because cutting counselors leaves schools without trained professionals to handle students’ problems.

Adele Munsterman (M.Ed. ’99), who teaches Spanish at Fridley High School, has felt the impact in her classroom. She has found that when she needs a counselor to help with an unruly student or to discuss a concern, they are not always available. “The staff we have is great,” she says. “In my opinion, they are being asked to do a lot of things, which means they are not available 100 percent of the time to counsel students.”

Numbers thin in elementary schools

The lack of counseling resources is even more acute in elementary schools. “Most districts have junior high and senior high counselors,” says Sheryl Kuznia (B.A. ’88), who has stepped out of the classroom for two years to coordinate an elementary-school counseling grant for St. Paul Public Schools. “Having elementary school counselors is a luxury most districts can’t afford.”

Counselors are especially vital for this age group because they can watch students develop and observe family situations for up to seven years. Seventy percent of the students at St. Paul Public Schools are living at or below the poverty level, Kuznia notes.

St. Paul has counselors at 18 of its 50 elementary schools. Some schools receive funding through Title I, a program aimed at improving the academic achievements of disadvantaged students. But that typically funds social workers or school psychologists, who primarily work with special education students. Counselors are often the third most expensive staff members in a school’s budget.

Perfect scenario

Jill Walker (M.A., ’06), a counselor at Minnetonka High School, doesn’t have to monitor the lunchroom or the halls. She meets with students about academic, social, and postsecondary topics. As spring semester begins, she is focused on helping students register for next year’s classes.

Walker is part of a counseling team that doubled to eight counselors and one college counselor—five of whom are alumni of the college—after the Minnetonka Public Schools board urged the district to review its guidance services. With the assistance of associate principal Joyce Rief, who has a background in counseling, the guidance staff sought input from students, parents, teachers, and other community stakeholders during the yearlong process.

The resulting expansion means that counselors are available to meet with every student at least once a year. The guidance department regularly publicizes its services through postcards to students, e-mails to parents, and other efforts. The counselors also offer seminars targeted to each grade level, which they plan as a group.

“We work as a team,” says Guidance Department Chair Kathy Zenk (B.S. ’69, counseling certificate ’98). She describes the mission of the department as personalization and planning, explaining that the counselors meet with each student on a scheduled, regular basis.

They continue to offer responsive services as well, addressing social and mental health issues as they arise. Walker has noted an increase in concerns related to the economy, for example. “[For] a lot of our parents, the financial needs haven’t been there in the past,” she says. “A lot more students have come to us in the counseling department.”

Zenk has been at Minnetonka High School since 1992 and chaired the committee that designed the expanded program. She has noted a resulting difference in both students and counselors. “I feel we know our students better, and they also may be more aware of what the counseling program can do for them,” Zenk says.

The redoubled effort didn’t cost the district much either. The school found some counselors with less career experience but a strong ability to connect with students. The district had also set aside the funds when it restructured its budget a couple years earlier, says Superintendent Dennis Peterson. This means that the counseling positions don’t depend on grant money, as they do in some other districts.

“Universally, people in our community feel like it’s been a successful model,” Peterson says.

Now other school districts are taking notice. “There’s some interest in learning about what we’ve been doing,” Zenk says “I think it needs to come from the districts locally to really look at what each community might need.”

Local commitment may be the only way to increase the number of counselors in each district. Bierma has seen efforts to pass legislation that would make school counselors mandatory fail several times, and he’s not optimistic such a measure will get through this year either.

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