The counselors have made changes this year to accommodate over 3,000 students. Three counselors left after the 2016-17 school year ended and three more counselors have come in since then. This plan has not been in motion for very long, but due to how many students have enrolled, they decided to move some things around.
This will be a difficult change for counselors and students. Since the students needed to be regrouped to balance out the number of kids for each counselor, they had to go into details. Dana Bert, the lead counselor, and all the other counselors tried their best to group the students correctly. Bert had to give up her set of kids in order to keep the system working efficiently. Their goal in distributing the students was to group them with counselors they would be comfortable with and which personalities would match best.
“I think it’ll be hard for them because as a counselor it’s our goal to build relationships and the reason we stay with an alpha is to keep the same kids as much as we can for the four years,” said Bert.
They have to do their best to keep a balance with the counselors so one does not end up with more kids than another. Bert explains that it is hard to move from a counselor that a student has built a relationship with and move to someone they do not know.
So she encourages the counselors to build a relationship with them and earn their trust. Bert says she hates that the counselors had to move everything around, but it will be for the best in the long run.
Bert had students before, but it worked out much better to distribute her students to other counselors. Her role now is to fill any spot that needs help.
“If a counselor is out, or if they’re backed up and a kid comes in or they’re in a meeting and they [the student] need a counselor, then I can assist kids better at that moment and they don’t have to wait or we don’t have to reschedule meetings…and if [the students] have any concerns I can sit in with them and work with them,” said Bert.
Bert encourages the students to move forward with the new counselor, but if they feel more comfortable talking to their old counselor, that is okay as well.
“What I want to do is [the student] come to me and meet [the new counselor] and we’ll talk and still work on things. Whatever the kid needs is the most important thing, but we’re still trying to adapt to the changes,” said Bert.
Bert said that she hopes that this plan will stick for a really long time, but depending on how many students enroll each year, the plan may have to shift to accommodate the counselors and students. She also said that she would love to have more counselors on board, with more than 400 students to each counselor, she says that more counselors would really help keep things even and manageable.
The three new counselors this year are Stacy Parker-Brown, Lisa Bradley and Barbara Wilks.
Bert said, “They’re amazing, I’m so blessed to have the three I really wanted.”
Overall, the goal is to balance out all the students and counselors. The counselors hope that students will be able to adapt well and move forward with their new counselors and work with them moving forward.
Here is the new alpha split:
