School districts across the nation, including the Washoe County School District (WCSD), are celebrating National School Counseling Week.
This year’s theme is “School Counselors: All in for All Students,” spearheaded by the American School Counselor Association (ASCA), a worldwide nonprofit that has worked with school counselors to help them guide their students toward academic achievement, career planning and social and emotional development.
“Our counselors provide essential resources for our students, staff and families, especially as the District works to manage the complex challenges posed by the pandemic,” said WCSD Board President Angie Taylor in a statement. “We continually lean on them to help our entire WCSD family and I join my fellow trustees in giving them a HUGE thank you for all they do every day.”
Taylor’s sentiments were echoed by WCSD Superintendent Kristen McNeill who added that, “We have relied on our counselors to provide services for our students and staff as we have all learned to cope with the changes in teaching, learning, and working due to the pandemic, and they have met the challenge with compassion and care for all of us. I appreciate their hard work and all their efforts to provide support to our District family.”
The district’s Counseling Coordinator Katherine Loudon said that counselors play an important role through interventions that are designed to promote mental health and ease barriers to learning and development.
“School counselors recognize and respond to the need for mental health services that promote social/emotional wellness and development for all students, and it has never been more essential and critical for our families to receive this support,” she said.
In WCSD, nearly 200 counselors work to provide support and resources to the district’s 62,000 students. Many people believe there are too few counselors in schools across the nation, including in Nevada.
Research done by the ASCA in conjunction with the National Association for College Admission Counseling corroborates the claim. The ASCA recommends a student-to-counselor ratio of 250:1; however, few states have achieved this. According to 2018-2019 data, Nevada as a whole averaged a ratio of 544:1. Washoe County fared better with somewhere between 350 to 400 students per counselor.
SOURCE: WCSD
