Commentary; Posted: 11/19/03

Cold Spring school tragedy shows need for counselors

Walter B. Roberts, Jr.
Guest Columnist

The tragedy at Cold Spring underscores the challenges facing todayís educators in Minnesota. Every day school personnel must deal not only with the tremendous responsibilities of teaching subject matter, but doing so with some children who are experiencing emotional troubles that threaten the health and safety of everyone in the school.

In most instances, educators intervene before personal injury occurs. But some of the very people most capable of assisting those students in trouble are prevented from doing their jobs.

Minnesota, the state that prides itself in leading the nation in education, ranks next-to-last in one area. According to the statistics ó whether one chooses to go by the numbers provided by the federal government or by the state ó the Minnesota K-12 average student population served by a single school counselor is likely to be more than 800.

Some schools in our state do not even have them. The statewide student-to-counselor averages in Wisconsin, Iowa or the Dakotas are often half that of Minnesota.

Contrary to the stereotypes of yesterday, todayís school counselors are highly trained professionals with graduate degrees. They are skilled in the effective techniques of helping students maximize their academic, personal and career potentials.

Though certainly capable of identifying early-onset mental health issues, intervening in a crisis, resolving student conflict or defusing a potentially violent situation, the heart of the profession remains in prevention. Counselors aim to help children and adolescents make sound decisions about life and their futures before a rash action creates a need for remediation.

Likewise, school counselors are some of the most likely people to recommend to parents that their child may need additional assistance for issues that cannot be managed in school. Most important, school counselors serve all students.

That includes those largely overlooked in todayís educational system ó the vast majority who fall in the ìgreat middleî and who receive no special attention.

With a dearth of school counselors in our state and with pressures mounting on our kids and schools to achieve academically and to find meaningful education and employment in the world beyond K-12 education, one would think that school counselors in Minnesota would at least be allowed to do what they are duly trained to do and what the parents of our children believe that they are supposed to be doing.

Think again.

School counselors are often placed in an impossible situation by both the magnitude of their workload and the number of duties thrown their way to block them from providing the types of direct services that students need.

The clerical duties are monstrous. Imagine a medical doctor who cared for 800 patients and who was also required to type all notes and correspondence, hand-file all paperwork in each client folder, while at the same time continuing to treat patients, meet with concerned parents, hold meetings and confer with other professionals about client concerns. Now you get the picture.

It gets worse.

School administrators often misuse school counselors as administrators. The most egregious example of this is in a position within some Minnesota schools ó the ìdean of students.î This job is often sold to the public as providing counseling services to kids when, in truth, the positions are designed primarily to take attendance, serve as truancy officers and administer discipline. These are not the jobs of school counselors.

Worse, some schools have assigned individuals as ìdeansî who have no counseling education and pawn them off to the residents of the community as providing school counseling services.

School counselors in Minnesota are besieged. It is time to get our stateís priorities back in place. We need to ensure that kids in trouble are identified early and get the help they need. Parents should demand of their legislators and school boards that school counselors are allowed to do their jobs.

We owe it to the students and families of our state that they receive the full measure of school counseling services that they are due.

Walter B. Roberts, Jr. is a professor of counselor education at Minnesota State University, Mankato.

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