Judy Rohm, a counselor in the Kent School District, wrote this blog post for our edCored series on education funding. If you want to be notified when new content is published in this month-long series, please subscribe to the LEV Blog’s RSS feed or once-a-day email digest.

I am in my 26th year as a counselor in a Kent School district middle school. For the past three years, and again this year, we are looking at potential cuts to the middle school counseling programs due to budget restraints. The district has cut counseling services in 15 of the 28 elementary schools in the past three years to cut costs.

Many of the families in Kent are experiencing serious financial challenges. In my middle school, 61% of our students are living in families who are below the national poverty level. With the limited family resources, high transiency and added stress due to financial strains, I have seen a tremendous increase in social/emotional/academic and material needs in the past 4-5 years.

The counseling department in our school facilitates a school-wide three-week study skills unit, a three-week career development unit and a 26-week social/emotional/healthy choice program. We also facilitate a WEB program to welcome and mentor 7th graders throughout their 7th grade year. Along with small groups for grief, anger, divorce, self-esteem and drug-related issues, individual counseling and mediations, we are extremely committed to providing as many preventative, as well as responsive, services as possible. With pending budget cuts, these services will be in jeopardy. The needs are great and the services are critical and often life-saving. We appreciate support from the community to maintain and restore critical counseling services to our schools, especially our elementary schools in Kent.

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