Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Pupil-counselor ratio stuns Reid

It's not easy to startle Sen. Harry Reid, but being told Thursday that Clark County's 300,000 K-12 students are served by only 600 guidance counselors managed to do it.

"Say that again," Reid asked Kim Boyle, the district's director of guidance and counseling.

She repeated the statistics - adding that middle and high school counselors handle case loads of 400-plus students. Reid shook his head in disbelief.

The issue surfaced during a roundtable discussion at the Community College of Southern Nevada's West Charleston campus attended by Reid and various educators. The meeting touched on the effectiveness of the federal No Child Left Behind Act and the cost of attending college.

When discussion turned to the role of counselors in helping high school students navigate their way to college, Reid was told how few counselors work in the district.

After the meeting, Reid said the state should make a priority of increasing the number of guidance counselors.

Reid said he's "all for full-day kindergarten" and understands why it's garnering so much attention in the Legislature, but the needs of older students are just as critical.

"The number of guidance counselors should be quadrupled," Reid said. "I'll do what I can at the federal level (to support initiatives for more staff), but the Legislature is in session. They should do something about it right now."

Clark County's student-counselor ratio is among the nation's highest. The School District is trying to reduce the caseload to about 300 students per counselor, which is still above the 250-1 ratio recommended by experts.

The district has made some "moderate gains" in improving the ratio, and added counselors as part of last year's budget, Clark County Schools Superintendent Walt Rulffes said. The need for more positions will certainly be part of the budget work sessions this spring, he said.

"We concur with Sen. Reid that we are woefully short of counselors. It's a problem nationwide," Rulffes said. "We also concur that a counselor can make a big difference in a student's choice of direction."

Reid convened the roundtable to discuss ways to make higher education more affordable for Nevada's students, and said he's troubled that the average Silver State student has $13,000 in loan debt.

Sharon Wurm, director of financial aid for the Nevada System of Higher Education, said 65 percent of students received some form of tuition assistance. Nevada has the nation's second-highest default rate for student loans, about 8 percent, Wurm said.

Peter Hurley, associate director of financial services for UNLV, said he's frustrated by recent changes to federal student loan programs, which clouded the definitions of which students would qualify for help.

"There are students at my campus who are eligible that we haven't been able to identify yet," Hurley said.

Angela Taylor, who oversees student financial aid at UNR, said popular federal programs such as the Pell Grant have not kept pace with the rising cost of higher education. Twenty years ago a Pell Grant would cover 80 percent of a student's college costs. That percentage has since dropped to 20 percent, Taylor said.

Reid instructed his staff to set up a meeting during his next state visit with K-12 education officials, to discuss what steps they are taking to help students transition to higher education.

"We have a lot of kids who are simply not making it through the system," Reid said. "If we don't address it in an aggressive way, it's going to be bad for our country."

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