As all licensed school counselors are aware, The American School Counselor Association (ASCA) developed an extremely valuable tool called The ASCA National Model: A Framework for School Counseling Programs (3) that identifies how a school counselor can be most effective in the school. Not only does it define what a comprehensive, data-driven school counseling program looks like, it also suggests a suitable student-to-school-counselor ratio, and helps counselors determine appropriate activities and how best to allocate their time.

To briefly depict the “ideal” school counselor scenario: All school counselors will have a ratio of maximum 250 students to each school counselor, will be able to use at least 80% of their time providing direct or indirect services, and will only engage in designated “appropriate” activities.

There is a small percentage of school counselors in the nation who are fortunate enough to work in this ideal scenario, which means they are probably more likely to be able to prove their effectiveness by addressing all of the ASCA Mindsets & Behaviors for Student Success: K-12 College- and Career-Readiness Standards for Every Student (2) through evidence-based practices. These same school counselors are probably able to engage in professional development activities to ensure they are up to date with the best practices and latest research so they meet all the ASCA School Counselor Competencies (4) on which many school counselors are now being evaluated through state legislation.

Many school counselors are inspired by this scenario that ASCA has laid out so perfectly and will add to their list of responsibilities to advocate more and more for their role, hopefully with some success. Many other school counselors are shrugging their shoulders in despair because they know they will never ever be free of inputting student schedules or planning the administration of state testing or daily supervising students during lunch. This discouragement is not necessarily because they are not advocating or because their administration doesn’t know they would be more effective without those extra roles or additional students, but because resources are scarce and all their colleagues are also stretched and pulling more weight than they would like as well.

Many educators may be even more worried because resources are likely to be stretched further based upon the decreased funding by the federal government as proposed in the President’s FY 2018 Budget Request for the U.S. Department of Education (5). Regardless of whether the long-term effects are positive or negative, there will be additional fiscal pressure put on schools until states and local communities are able to find ways to replace the money, which will probably be done through property-owning taxpayers. Using property taxes to fund vital, but not necessarily mandated resources, like school counseling services, has been considered unconstitutional by many, since property taxes in many urban or rural communities are much lower than in affluent suburban communities.

School counselors are creative and tenacious, though! Even when their student-to-counselor ratio is 500 or 650 or 800 or 1200 to 1, they are still making a difference in the lives of so many students. They use their organizational and time-management skills to allocate their services to impact as many students as possible, while being responsive to those students most in need. They discuss options with their administration and colleagues to support students, families, and staff members as comprehensively as possible. They address barriers to learning and work cooperatively with other student services personnel within the school. They notice when more intensive support is needed and refer students and families to outside resources to address potential mental health and/or learning needs.

School counselors are very aware of student needs, but sometimes they are unable to meet them fully, usually through no fault of their own. They literally cannot do all the work that is on their plate in many instances. When the additional responsibilities, i.e. test administration, scheduling, coordinating student study teams, lunch/recess duty, etc., are not going to be lifted from their plates anytime soon, they have to be extra creative. Oddly enough, many school counselors may start hyper-focusing on one main responsibility or on a limited number of students in their caseloads.

As mentioned before, ASCA has identified a fairly comprehensive list of “Inappropriate Activities for School Counselors” that many school counselors use to advocate for their role to administrators, usually with an attempt to stop assisting with discipline or enforcing dress codes or covering lunch duty. However, many school counselors find it difficult to not engage in long-term counseling in schools to address mental health conditions, either diagnosed or undiagnosed. Fortunately, ASCA has also developed the ASCA Ethical Standards for School Counselors (1), where there are many detailed examples of how school counselors can support students while making the most ethical decisions, including an entire section on Appropriate Referrals and Advocacy – A.6.a-e.