The Garfield Re-2 School District is hoping to introduce more certified counselors into schools after receiving a state grant. 

“We have been awarded the Counselor Corps grant and our work will begin this school year of a four year grant cycle,” said Simone Richardson, Curriculum Director. This grant is from the Colorado Department of Education. 

Richardson discussed the difference between counselors and clinicians. 

“The first point to make, in Garfield Re-2, counselors have specific roles,” Richardson said. “What we’ve learned…is that they all have a counseling role and they do similar things in their buildings, but their philosophies are embedded and driven from different places.”

All the counselors in Garfield Re-2 support in the school setting by collaborating with teachers, parents and administrators, Richardson said. 

“The biggest emphasis on that bullet (point) really is that as they support a student, they make sure the teachers, parents and administrators are aware of the support that students need around academic guidance, career planning, and social and emotional development,” Richardson said. “That’s the gist of what they’re doing.”

Counselors support students helping them deal with college readiness, peer relationships and academic stress. 

Clinicians are more about mental health treatment, dealing with psychological issues and treatment in various ways, like therapy. 

“All of our counselors are licensed,” Richardson said. “They are educators in Garfield Re-2. They follow the same process that our licensed teachers follow.”

Board member Tony May asked how social and emotional development wouldn’t overlap into the clinician side of support. 

“Often our counselors will work through mediations with students,” Richardson gave an example. “Often our counselors will teach classes, at the elementary level in particular, they’ll go in and teach social and emotional programming, like how to be resilient, how to be determined, some skills for self-reflection and evaluating yourself and where you are in persevering.”

Counselors visit with students during special classes, like physical education, music or character education classes, which are classes specifically for learning certain character traits like those listed above. 

This happens about once a month for 30 to 50 minutes, Richardson estimates. 

“We started working with our counselors last year to try and get them grounded and unified,” Richardson said. “Because there is a discrepancy across all 10 of our schools with what their jobs look like.”

The counselors chose, on an elementary level, that their work falls into student support, leadership in the building, family support, staff support and community support. More details, like check-ins for student support, were also noted by the counselors in their choices. 

“On the secondary level…their jobs have entities that are very different from the elementary level,” Richardson said. “The secondary counselors spend a lot of time with risk assessments.”

Students who the counselors believe are risks to themselves or other students are followed by a risk assessment by the counselor, but the counselors also provide support at student meetings, like re-entry, school attendance review board, or Individualized Education Program meetings.  

“Counselors at the secondary level are highly involved in scheduling because they do support the paths the students take,” Richardson said. 

While counselors’ philosophies differ from elementary to secondary and across the various schools, the reason Garfield Re-2 wants help from the CDE is to have a unifying district philosophy, which, Richardson says, they don’t really have one. 

The School Counselor Corps Grant purpose is “to increase availability and implementation of effective school-based counseling to increase the state graduation rate and increase the percentage of students who appropriately prepare for, apply to, and continue into postsecondary education and career readiness.” It is a four year cohort grant cycle. 

The first year of the grant is a developmental year, involving data collection, analysis of the data, program and professional development and alignment of the district. 

“Years two through four, that’s the biggest chunk of the grant because we will benefit from six of our schools being able to increase their counselor servicing based on the work we do in year one,” Richardson said. 

Richardson said they looked at the six schools out of the 10 that would benefit the best from increasing the counselor to student ratio. 

“At Rifle Middle School, we had one counselor to 579 kids,” Richardson said of last year’s ratio. “Think about that: one counselor trying to foster college and career readiness.” 

Rifle Middle School, Coal Ridge High School, Cactus Valley Elementary, Grand Mesa Elementary, Highland Elementary and Wamsley Elementary are the six schools determined to benefit the most from more counselors. 

“We will be adding counselors to the schools, doubling the support for the kids that are there,” Richardson said. 

Those counselors won’t be added yet since this is the first year of the grant, when data is being collected and analyzed. 

Board member Britton Fletchall worried that the CDE’s guidelines wouldn’t match up with Garfield Re-2, but Richardson reassured the board that wasn’t the way the CDE had been working. 

“What I have found in working with CDE is they’re very flexible, they’re not coming in here to tell us how to do it,” Richardson said. “They’re coming in here to help us figure out how we can best do it with what we have in place and what we want to see our district be. They’re facilitators.” 

She also shared with the board that CDE is willing to speak to the board and answer their questions about what would be happening in the schools and how they’d be contributing to Garfield Re-2 figuring out their counseling goals. 

Board member Fathom Jensen asked about possibly having a district wide counselor that oversees and helps where it’s needed. 

“A beautiful dream, Fathom,” Richardson said. “It comes down to what we can afford in our school district and what, through the work of this grant, is deemed as necessities through appropriate programming.”