Running head: Systems Change Project 1

Systems Change Project

Tyrone R. Robinson Jr

University of Brandman
Systems Change Project 2

Systems Change Project

Introduction

This paper will evaluate the delivery of direct services by

a counseling department, and then make a recommendation to

improve their delivery of these services. Encinal Jr. & Sr. high

school’s counseling department will be the focus of this paper,

but the school district, Alameda Unified School District (AUSD),

Encinal resides in will be examined as well. The discussion will

start by surveying the entire school district, and then focus on

the needs assessment at Encinal.

Surveying

Alameda Unified School District. ​Prior to the needs assessment

administered at Encinal, research was conducted on all schools

within the Alameda Unified School District to obtain information

on counseling departments at all sites. Before this discussion

starts, a couple of caveats will be explained. First, The

district has fifteen schools in total, but there are four more

charter schools within the district too. These four schools

operate more independently than the rest. This made gathering

information around their counseling departments terribly

difficult. For this reason, the four charter schools will be

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excluded from this survey. Second, as schools are discussed,

it’ll be done primarily on an entire level; e.g. elementary,

middle, and high school.

Gathering data on the nine elementary schools within this

district proved to be a task of resiliency. After researching

online, it is evident that counselors at the elementary level

are nonexistent (AUSD, 2018). Initially, this finding seemed

inaccurate but after much research, it’s true. A study on

student to counselor ratios agreed with these findings.

Carrell’s (2006) study stated “some districts offer no

counseling services at the elementary school level” (p.1).

However, each elementary school did have a school psychologist

and a speech pathologist. One of the nine schools, Bay Farm

Elementary School, serves students from kindergarten up to

eighth grade. This school has one counselor that primarily

serves the middle school, grades sixth through eighth. Due to

the lack of counselors at the elementary school level, there

aren’t any comprehensive counseling programs using the ASCA

National Model.

As stated before, Bay Farm Elementary is a middle school

too. It has the smallest cohort of middle school students and

has one counselor (C. Fergusson, Intervention Coordinator,

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personal communication, February 20, 2019). There are five

counselors, three speech pathologists, two school psychologists,

one school psychologist intern, and three student support

providers among four middle schools (AUSD, 2018). The position

student support provider is ambiguous, and is define by the

principal at each site (​D. Hurst, Principal, ​personal

communication, February 22, 2019). Counseling departments at the

middle school level aren’t using the ASCA National Model.

Although counseling departments have made great progress in

recent years within the district, to deem them comprehensive

wouldn’t be accurate. Resources change year to year, and this

district has a lot of turnover due to low wages. These two

reasons limit consistency within this district. Consistency is

necessary to build a comprehensive counseling program (​C.

Fergusson, Intervention Coordinator, ​personal communication,

February 25, 2019).

As stated above, consistency thrives when there are

resources and committed employees. Although the high schools

within this district are closer to achieving comprehensive

counseling departments than the middle schools, they too, still

fall short. The ASCA National Model isn’t the guiding force

among the counseling departments at the high school level (​C.

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Lua, Counselor, ​personal communication, February 20, 2019).

There are nine school counselors, two student support providers,

and two school psychologists among four high schools. The two

prominent high schools have comprehensive health centers on

campus that provide a variety of services, notably mental health

services. The two schools rely on the health centers heavily to

fill counseling gaps (​C. Fergusson, Intervention Coordinator,

personal communication, February 20, 2019).

Encinal. ​Encinal high school has three academic counselors, one

school psychologist, one supplemental counselor, and an on

campus health center with two therapists. The counseling

department doesn’t use the ASCA National Model (​C. Lua,

Counselor, ​personal communication, February 20, 2019). Encinal

is the only school in the district that has a full multi-tiered

system of supports (MTSS) (​C. Fergusson, Intervention

Coordinator, ​personal communication, February 20, 2019).

Although Encinal’s counseling department has an abundance of

services that are unique to its campus, such as a restorative

justice center and an after school peer tutoring program; the

lack of guidance in all three counseling domain areas: academic,

career, and social/personal, results in it falling short of a

comprehensive program.
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Needs Assessments

The focus of this needs assessment was to evaluate the

delivery of direct services by Encinal’s counseling department.

In order to do this, six members of the counseling department

were surveyed using the ASCA National Model assessment of

delivery of direct services (ASCA, 2012, p. 62). The survey’s

results state that the counseling department is doing an almost

exceptional job of delivery direct services (see Appendix A to

view the full survey). To gain perspective on the topic from the

student population, a small sample, nine students, were asked to

complete a survey. The survey consisted of questions that were

guided by student to counselor communication, relationship, and

individual counseling. With all research, the collected data

possessed strengths and weaknesses, but overall, the information

taken from the data was beneficial (see Appendix B to view the

full survey). Several concerns revealed themselves about the

delivery of direct services: (1) only one student said that they

had a bad relationship with their counselor, but a third said

their counselor doesn’t care about them; (2) a third of the

students said the line of communication with their counselor

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could be better; (3) seven out of nine students said they could

use support with topics within the three domains; (4) a third of

the students suggested that counselors need to be more available

to check in with them. These concerns make for an unfortunate

realization; the delivery of direct services at Encinal needs

improvement.

Proposal

To improve the delivery of direct services, Encinal needs

to improve its student to counselor ratio. The American

Counselor Association recommends a student to counselor ratio

that isn’t larger than 250:1 (NACAC & ASCA, 2018). Encinal is

currently at about a ratio of 350:1 ​(​C. Lua, Counselor, ​personal

communication, February 20, 2019)​. A large percentage of a

school counselor’s job is centered around a very simple dutie,

talking. However, this dutie isn’t simple when a counselor’s

caseload is overwhelmingly large. A 2014 study revealed that

“students in schools where counselors are responsible for

advising a large number of students are less likely to speak

with a counselor about college, plan to attend college, take the

SAT, and enroll in a four-year college” (Woods and Domina, p.

1). School counselors need time to reach every student by

inspiring, educating, and guiding all of them through direct

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counseling. A 2006 study proved that “lowering the number of

students per counselor decreases both the probability of a

disciplinary recurrence and the share of students involved in a

disciplinary incident”(Carrell & Carrell, p. 14). Again,

counselors need time to impact every students’ social/personal

self. School counselors will not be able to impact students in

the fashion they need to, if student to counselor ratios exceed

the ASCA recommended ratio of 250:1 (NACAC & ASCA, 2018). In

order to achieve the recommended ratio, Encinal needs an

additional academic counselor in the department. The question

now, is how?

As mentioned before, Encinal has ​three academic counselors

and one supplemental counselor. The supplemental counselor

doesn’t have a traditional caseload. Unlike the three academic

counselors, the supplemental counselor’s caseload is

significantly smaller and consists of high needs students. This

counselor works primarily with the restorative justice center on

campus mediating conflicts and responding to various crises on

campus (​C. Fergusson, Intervention Coordinator, ​personal

communication, February 20, 2019). The supplemental counselor

needs to become an academic counselor, so that the recommended

ratio can be achieved.

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Integration Plan

Moving the supplemental counselor into the position of

academic counselor is simple. However, filling the void that

this move will cause isn’t as simple. Encinal’s librarian

doesn’t plan to return next year. The Librarian works in a space

called the student center. The student center houses the media

center, library, intervention coordinator, supplemental

counselor, and restorative justice center. The school doesn’t

need a librarian in the space, and this position could be filled

by a credentialed staff member such as a counselor ​(​D. Hurst,

Principal, ​personal communication, February 22, 2019)​. If an

additional counselor was hired, the integration of an additional

academic counselor would be seamless.

Budget.​ The cost of this addition could immediately save the

site money too. The current librarian will be entering their

14th year and their education puts them in the last column at

$82,629.35 (see Appendix C, Table 1). The site could hire a

counselor with no more than 12 years experience with maximum

education, and it wouldn’t impact the budget for the worse (see

Appendix C, Table 2). However, if the site hired a counselor

with less years and/or less education, it could potentially save

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the site a minimum $27,616.63 for a first year counselor or

$24,223.04 for a third year counselor.

Evaluation.​ The first step in evaluating this recommendation of

an additional counselor is to adopt the ASCA National Model. The

ASCA National model would allow the department to do a

comprehensive assessment of the department that would encompass

the additional counselor. The survey in Appendix B would

definitely need to be incorporated to gather student feedback

about the delivery of direct services. However, the survey would

need revision to ensure that if the desired results are

achieved, they’re a direct result of the additional counselor.

Conclusion

The needs assessment found that the Encinal counseling

department isn’t delivering direct services to the best of its

ability. In order to better deliver these services, academic

counselors need more time with their students. This can only

happen with a smaller student to counselor ratio. The addition

of one academic counselor would yield the ASCA recommended ratio

of 250:1. The addition would come at no expense to the school

because the counselor hired would be filling a vacant position.

Although this addition may be perceived as unorthodox, it would

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provide the students with a more valuable high school experience

than they’re currently receiving; an experience that has the

power to impact all of their persons in the key areas: academic,

personal/social, and career.

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Reference

Alameda Unified School District (AUSD). (2108). Retrieved from

https://www.alameda.k12.ca.us/

American School Counselor Association (ASCA). (2018).

Career/Roles. Retrieved from

https://www.schoolcounselor.org/school-counselors-members/c

areers-roles

American School Counselor Association (ASCA) (2012). ​The ASCA

National Model: A framework for school counseling programs,

Third Edition​. Alexandria, VA: Author.

Carrell, S. (2006). The Student to Counselor Ratio: Does it

Matter? [PDF file]. Retrieved from

https://www.umass.edu/schoolcounseling/uploads/breif5.3.pdf

Carrell, S.E. & Carrell, S.A. (2006). Do Lower Student to

Counselor Ratios Reduce School Disciplinary Problems? [PDF

file]. Retrieved from

https://www.schoolcounselor-ca.org/files/Advocacy/Lower%20C

ounselor%20Ratios%20Equal%20Less%20Discipline.pdf

National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC) &

American School Counselor Association (ASCA​) (2018).

STUDENT-TO-COUNSELOR RATIO REPORT: Learn which states are

​
gaining or losing ground. ​Journal of College Admission,
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(239), 27. Retrieved from

http://libproxy.chapman.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscoh

ost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,uid,cookie,url&d

b=eft&AN=130810987&site=ehost-live

Woods, C. S., & Domina, T. (2014). The School Counselor Caseload

and the High School-to-College Pipeline. ​Teachers College

​ ​116(
Record, ​ 10). Retrieved from

http://libproxy.chapman.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscoh

ost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,uid,cookie,url&d

b=eric&AN=EJ1033545&site=ehost-live
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Appendix A

Survey of Six Members of the Encinal Counseling Department

The following questions were taken from the ASCA National Model.

Data was gathered using a google form.

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Appendix B

Survey of Nine Students at Encinal

The following questions were designed to yield qualitative data

around the delivery of direct services at Encinal high school.

Data was gathered using a google form.

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Appendix B Cont’d
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Appendix C

Alameda Unified School District Salary Schedules: Teacher &

Counselor.

Table 1
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​Appendix C Cont’d

Table 2