A14 The Region The Boston Globe THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2019
why they come to me.”
Indrisano intervenes to save teen friendships.
She helps with issues at home. She even keeps
bags filled with Dove soap bars, toothpaste, and
shampoo to discreetly give to needy students.
“When I was in high school, my guidance
counselor did not do any of this,’’ said Indrisano,
who’s been at Eastie for four years. “I saw my
guidance counselor when I was applying for col-
lege.”
Indrisano’s experience underscores the
changed nature of guidance counseling at public
high schools in Massachusetts and beyond. Once
focused largely on helping students prepare for
college and careers, counselors have seen their
portfolios expand to encompass a host of new re-
sponsibilities for students’ social and emotional
well-being.
This shift — a response to students having
more intense needs — has provided a valuable
in-school resource, but at a significant cost: It
has pushed college advising to the back burner,
according to interviews with three dozen coun-
selors, school officials, researchers, students, and
lawmakers.
In wealthier communities with lots of college-
educated parents, counselors’ college-advising
work may seem less than vital. But in schools
with large numbers of students from disadvan-
taged backgrounds, counselors are crucial part-
ners in economic mobility, helping facilitate
high-stakes decisions about college and financial
aid.
Many students — particularly those who are
first in their families to pursue higher education
— lack a basic understanding of the college ad-
missions and financial aid processes, or what it
takes to succeed on campus, according to a study
of roughly 500 Massachusetts high school se-
niors by Richard Lapan and Timothy Poynton,
professors in the University of Massachusetts
system who specialize in school counseling and
education.
“One thing is clear to me: Not getting high-
quality and in-depth counseling services has neg-
ative consequences for these deserving young
people,’’ Lapan said.
Kenia Arbaiza, who graduated from Somer-
ville High School in June, applied to 10 colleges
but got into just one, the University of Massachu-
setts Boston. She blamed what she felt was limit-
ed guidance from her school counselor on what
colleges would be a good fit.
“I did not know anything about college,’’ said
Arbaiza, 18. “Both my parents are from El Salva-
dor and neither of them got past the first grade.”
Arbaiza said she couldn’t get enough time
with her counselor and feels that he did not suffi-
ciently advocate for her — to her teachers and to
college admissions officers — when a mental
health crisis kept her out of school and caused
her grades to dive during her senior year.
Somerville High School officials disputed Ar-
baiza’s assertions, though they declined to detail
the counseling she received, citing privacy. They
also said two additional college counselors will
be working in the school this year.
“Kenia is entitled to her opinion,’’ her former
counselor, Justin LaBerge, said in an interview,
noting the pride he’s taken in his work as a
school counselor for the past 13 years. “It’s a very
difficult job, but it’s rewarding, too.... Students
who are dealing with significant mental health
issues [are] always going to be my main focus. I
don’t neglect them for a second.”
M
att Wilkins remembers when he
could meet with each of his students
at least once or twice a year. The
guidance counselor at Lynn English
High School no longer has the time. Instead he
lurches from crisis to crisis, spread thin by an un-
relenting caseload and soaring student demands.
Like an ER doctor, Wilkins operates in triage
mode, giving priority to students with the most
pressing needs — serious problems at home, se-
vere anxiety, or suicidal thoughts. He’s forced to
put off students needing guidance on where to
go to college, how to pay for it, and how to begin
preparing for careers.
“Some days I come in thinking I’m going to
get to all these kids. I’m going to talk with them
about their grades, their extracurricular activi-
ties, their future plans,’’ Wilkins said. “And I just
have to put those aside because a student crisis
has entered my office.”
Wilkins does what he can for his young charg-
es, but he worries about the load he and his fel-
low counselors will shoulder this fall at Lynn
English High, a Gateway City school experienc-
ing a surge in foreign-born students with trauma
in their past.
“There are six of us.... We were told to ex-
pect 2,000 kids,’’ he said. “I don’t know how we
are going to do it.”
Every school should have at least one guid-
ance counselor for every 250 students, according
to guidelines from the American School Counsel-
or Association. The New England Association of
Schools and Colleges recommends one counselor
for every 300 students at the high school level,
the same ratio outlined in the Boston Teachers
Union contract.
The reality is often different. Schools in most
states don’t meet the national guidelines, accord-
ing to the counselor association. For high
schools in Massachusetts, the median counselor-
to-student ratio of just over 200, not including
special-education counselors, does meet the
guideline, according to state data. But the num-
bers vary widely from district to district, with
some schools having 300 students per counselor
or more.
The true state of school counseling in Massa-
chusetts is difficult to assess. Counselors have to
be licensed by the state. But, unlike many other
states, Massachusetts has no state oversight on
counselors’ caseloads or job requirements.
As a result, there is little uniformity across
uGUIDANCE COUNSELORS
Continued from Page A
districts as to how many students counselors are
responsible for; what functions counselors per-
form; what their formal job titles are; and how
much time they spend with students. What data
do exist are incomplete, because of haphazard
reporting to the state Department of Elementary
and Secondary Education.
Maine, by contrast, defines what constitutes a
comprehensive school counseling program. Utah
lays out a “systemic approach” for effective
school counseling. At least 30 states, including
New Hampshire, Missouri, and Tennessee, have
some kind of mandate on school counseling, ac-cording to the national counselor association.
Mandy Savitz-Romer, a professor at Harvard’s
Graduate School of Education who specializes in
school counseling, said Massachusetts could do
much more to elevate and standardize school
counseling, including appointing a state-level
guidance director and providing meaningful
support to local communities.
“I don’t think there has been a real interest in
taking on school counseling at the state level,”
she said.
State officials acknowledge being largely in
the dark about how student access to guidance
counseling compares across school districts.
“It’s really hard to untangle in many ways
who has got what,’’ said Jeffrey C. Riley, the
state’s education commissioner.
Riley, who’s worked as a superintendent, mid-
dle school principal, and school adjustmentcounselor, said high school guidance counselors
play a key role in setting students up for postsec-
ondary success. The state’s focus, however, is on
giving students the support they need long be-
fore they get to college.
“I’m a firm believer in our children needing
more folks to help meet their social-emotional
needs,’’ Riley said. “I also believe in local control,
so we want each individual school district or
even school to determine what they think is best
for their own community.”
Governor Charlie Baker has pushed for more
funding for mental health counseling in the
schools, including a propos-
al for an additional $75 mil-
lion that is currently tied up
in a larger debate on Beacon
Hill over the state’s school
spending formula. It’s un-
clear whether any of that
money would go toward col-
lege advising, however.
Interviews with counsel-
ors and students suggest
that the recommended
counselor-to-student ratios
don’t reflect the modern
workload, where a relatively
small number of students
can monopolize a counsel-
or’s time. The more devoted
counselors are to students
with emotional and social
problems — post-traumatic
stress, behavioral issues,
hunger — the less time they
have to help with college
readiness, counselors say.
Guidance counselors also
report being asked to per-
form a host of tasks outside
of what they consider their
core responsibilities.
They’re given discipline cas-
es to handle and standardized tests to adminis-
ter. Molly Brewster, a counselor at Brighton High
School, said she has bathroom duty for nearly an
hour twice a week.
“In those 53 minutes,” she said, “I could be
meeting with a student, talking with them about
colleges, telling them about scholarships, or re-
viewing their college applications.’’
“I work hard to advocate for these students,’’
Brewster added. “But kids do fall through the
cracks.”
Without more state oversight, there’s little ac-
countability for ensuring the best counseling for
Massachusetts students, said Robert Bardwell,
executive director of the Massachusetts School
Counselors Association.
“All you have to do is to look at the number of
kids who drop out and the number of students
who do not persist in college to see there is some-thing wrong with the system,” said Bardwell,
who is also director of school counseling at Mon-
son High School.S
everal years ago, Savitz-Romer, the Har-
vard professor, took a close look at guid-
ance counseling in Boston’s public
schools, with the district’s blessing. Her
final report, in 2015, revealed a piecemeal sys-
tem with “no set of standards [or] guidelines
across schools,” no unifying approach to data col-
lection, and no clear-cut rules on how schools
should use outside partners to advise students.
Savitz-Romer’s report urged the incoming su-
perintendent at the time, Tommy Chang, to do
something. But not much happened.
“They have not made it a priority,’’ said Savitz-
Romer, author of the recent book “Fulfilling the
Promise: Reimagining School Counseling to Ad-
vance Student Success.”
Indeed, many Boston high school graduates
whom the Globe interviewed for its Valedictori-
ans Project, published in January, reported being
clueless about the financial, cultural, and aca-
demic aspects of college when they arrived on
their respective campuses. Some later floundered
or dropped out, having made ill-advised college
choices, and amassed major debt.
Boston school officials say there are 117 li-
censed counselors doing guidance work with the
city’s 16,000 high school students and that at
least another 84 people working for outside non-
profits and colleges help students with college
advising. The nonprofits’ role is key, Savitz-
Romer said, though she cautioned that without
better coordination, “we are doing an injustice to
students.”
In the spring, amid criticism that Boston was
failing to prepare students for college, Laura Per-
ille, then the city’s interim superintendent, resur-
rected the idea of boosting the district’s guidance
programs. She asked Savitz-Romer to come back
and help facilitate a task force.
In a large room at the Jeremiah E. Burke High
School, with the evening sun still bright, Savitz-
Romer asked a group of about 10 educators to
write down their wish list for services all Boston
students should receive from the school counsel-
ors. They scribbled “career exploration,’’ “intern-
ships,’’ “financial aid,’’ and “college advising” on
giant papers taped to a wall.
One task force member, Geoffrey Walker, the
head of school at Fenway High School, lingered
on “college advising,” a key role he said the dis-
trict cannot fill without outside organizations.
Fenway, which has one part-time college adviser
on staff and roughly 375 students, relies on a
full-time college adviser from a local organiza-
tion as well as assistance from other nonprofits.
(Fenway also has three student-support coordi-
nators who are licensed in school counseling or
Continued on next pageSchoolcounselors’workloadballoons
PHOTOS BY CRAIG F.WALKER/GLOBE STAFF
Sean Whynegrant
expressed his joy when
ninth-grade school
counselor Jacquelyn
Indrisano told him he
had made the honor roll
for the first time at East
Boston High School in
the spring. The
counselor worked with
students Julian Castro
(left) and Corleo Alas
during a workshop at
the school, using
Naviance, a software
that helps students with
college planning and
career assessment.‘Ididnotknowanythingaboutcollege.
BothmyparentsarefromElSalvadorand
neitherofthemgotpastthefirstgrade.’
KENIA ARBAIZA , a Somerville High School graduate
who applied to 10 colleges and got into just one. She believes
she didn’t get enough counseling at school.