From: www.lubbockonline.com
By Karen Michael / A-J Media
All three of Lubbock’s largest school districts said they are already working on many of the ideas espoused by Gov. Greg Abbott’s “School and Firearm Safety Action Plan” — in particular his call for school counselors.
Some Texas school experts said in a Texas Tribune article that they are heartened by Abbott’s proposal, but think the governor should go further to improve mental health resources in schools. Texas is one of 20 states that does not require schools to have counselors, and has the fifth-highest student-to-counselor ratio in the country, according to the American School Counselor Association.
Kathy Rollo, superintendent of Lubbock Independent School District, said the district is doing a lot of things that Abbott’s plan suggested. Every Lubbock ISD school has a counselor, although some of the district’s smallest elementary schools share a counselor split between two schools. Each middle school has two counselors, and high schools have several.
“High school is where there is more of a challenge,” Rollo said.
When House Bill 5 was passed in 2013 in Texas, it restructured the state’s graduation requirements. At that time, she said, the district added new high school counselors to mitigate all of the additional college preparatory requirements, allowing the district to still have counselors available for social and emotional issues.
“Counseling is something that’s always been important at Lubbock ISD,” Rollo said. “That’s not a void in our district. I’ve been with the district 28 years, and we’ve always had counselors.”
Macy Satterwhite, deputy superintendent at Lubbock-Cooper ISD, said all Cooper schools have at least one full-time counselor, with the high school having more.
But she said she doesn’t think the public understands that school counselors have diverse duties, including mental health, scheduling, class rank and college preparations.
“Many times they’re pulled from their duties of counseling children to perform administrative tasks such as STAAR testing,” Satterwhite said.
If the governor can come through in the next Legislative session and provide funding for more counseling services, she said Lubbock-Cooper would love to provide it.
“If funding came through, we could do so much to help the social and emotional growth of kids,” Satterwhite said.
She called mental health a “critical area” for students” who come from varied backgrounds.
“Whenever kids are struggling with mental health issues, in my opinion, that takes a priority over anything else, because they can’t perform well in a classroom if they are in turmoil,” Satterwhite said.
One thing that LCISD is doing, Satterwhite said, is making sure to connect every student. Students who don’t have a relationship with at least one caring adult are identified and connected with a mentor. Satterwhite said she has personally connected with a student who needed a mentor.
“I think it lets them know that someone is watching, that they care, that they’re going to check in on you, check in on your grades,” she said.
She said she meets on campus with the student she is mentoring, sometimes bringing a breakfast burrito or a drink.
“We can always do more and more and more. I think it’s a good start, to start with the counselors,” Satterwhite said, noting that if they had more administrative help, perhaps they could free up more time to deal with students.
Frenship’s superintendent, Michelle McCord said like the other districts, Frenship has counselors in every school, with multiple counselors at the high school. She and Satterwhite both sang the praises of the Communities in Schools program, a partner with the Lubbock-area United Way that places representatives in schools to help with academic gaps and that can intervene to provide wrap-around services to help students and parents.
McCord said Communities in Schools can intervene in some ways that school officials cannot. They can take parents to a state office where they can apply for food stamps, or they can take kids to get glasses if needed.
“What Communities in Schools does, it’s not a replacement for a counselor, it’s just additional support, for students and parents,” McCord said.
However, McCord has a unique perspective on counseling. Long before she became Frenship’s superintendent, she worked as a school counselor and also in a private practice as a licensed professional counselor.
As someone who trained in both professions, she said academic counselors don’t have a lot of training on mental disorders. They are actually expressly prohibited from providing a diagnosis to a child unless they have the additional professional counseling license to do so.
School counselors can be good about connecting families and students with outside services, if there is an issue that seems to be outside of the school’s realm of expertise, McCord said. She said when a family needs food stamps, Medicaid, assistance from a food bank, family counseling or other services, the school connects them with someone who can help.
Mental health is important, McCord said. So is academic counseling. The primary role of counselors in schools is academic, she said.
“I don’t know if the answer is more counselors” or different training, she said. “Here’s what I do know: Counselors are busy all of the time. We need somebody to do the work they are doing.”
Since Frenship High School had a gun-threat scare in December that turned out to be a prank, the district has made several changes, including working with law enforcement agencies. She said the Lubbock County Sheriff’s Office, Lubbock Police Department, Wolfforth Police Department and Frenship Police Department have all been helpful and reviewed the school’s plans and infrastructure.
“They have increased their presence on our campuses,” McCord said. She said that specifically, police have been coming to schools on their beats, building relationships with staff and students and becoming more familiar with the buildings.
She said she appreciates the governor’s plan, and noted that it is a start. Like other districts, Frenship officials have been reading Abbott’s plan and looking for new ways to improve safety.
“We just have a mindset of continuous improvement,” McCord said, noting that schools have to have a growth mindset at all times. “Safety and security is the same way. We do a lot of things very well, but we are not complacent.”