As a mourning nation focuses on the need for more mental health support for students, California has regularly ranked at or near the bottom among the states in the number of counselors per student.In California, there was one counselor for every 810 students in 2009-10. Nationally, there were almost twice as many. The American School Counselor Association recommends a ratio of one counselor to 250 students.
“We don’t have enough counselors in school,” said Art Revueltas, deputy superintendent of Montebello Unified School District near Los Angeles. “As they transition out of our schools, they’re abandoned. There’s no mental health services for them out there.”
School psychologists are even rarer, with estimates ranging from 4,000 to 4,500 for the state’s 6.2 million public school students.
After the Newtown shooting, “there has been an increased focus on mental health issues,” said Eric Sparks, assistant director of the American
Districts use creative methods to counsel students - by Susan Frey
(EdSource Today writer Kathryn Baron contributed to this article.) In an era of budget cutbacks and more pressure on students to perform, some districts and teachers are finding ways to stretch their dollars to provide mental health services for students. The secret sauce in programs that try to improve student behavior is relationships. The goal is to get students to feel connected – to their...