‘Who is going to help me?’ In Philly schools, life without counselors
Protestors demonstrate calling for increased funding for public schools, Thursday, Aug. 22, 2013, in Philadelphia. (Photo by Matt Rourke/AP)
With just days before the start of school for Philadelphia public school students, elementary school counselor Nikkie Wong Phing is on edge. It’s not the typical anticipation that comes with the start of a new school year, of greeting returning students after a long summer break or coaxing new ones down unfamiliar halls.
“It’s a mix of everything,” Wong Phing said. “But it’s mostly anxiety.”
Over the summer the School District of Philadelphia shuttered 23 schools and laid off nearly 4,000 teachers and other support staff, including every school counselor in the district, 270 in all. Last month the city borrowed $50 million to help the beleaguered district open on time and with the barest essentials. The 11th hour influx allowed the district to rehire about 1,000 laid-off employees, including about 126 school counselors.
Wong Phing was re-hired. But the start of the school year brings no optimism, she said.
Thousands of transferring students from closed schools will be crowding into new receiving schools. And where school counselors were besieged by a daily onslaught of students in need in the best of times, this year they will be doing their jobs with fewer than half the colleagues they had a year ago but with more students to serve.
According to the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, no school with fewer than 600 students will be assigned a counselor. Only one counselor will be assigned to a school with 600 or more students. And only those schools with more than 1,500 students will receive more than one counselor.
In Philadelphia, like many major urban cities, a vast number of students are impoverished. The arrive in school hobbled by everything that often accompanies poverty: violent communities, unstable homes and food insecurity. Counselors have often been the most reliable line of
