In poor districts, pandemic overwhelms school counselors

To help her students keep up with school this year, counselor Nadia Pearce has tried it all.

She reminds them of goals they had before the pandemic, for college or a career. She calls parents and goes over how their children are supposed to log in for distance learning. She begs. She pleads. She practices tough love.

“I really have to say, ‘You’re in this nest right now. This is high school and we are pampering you. But when you leave here, you’re going to be an adult and you have to make your own decisions and there won’t be a

Ms. Pearce to come advocate for you,’” she said. “‘So you have to get it together, now.’”

School counselors everywhere have played important roles in guiding students through the stress and uncertainty of the pandemic, but the burden has been especially heavy in urban, high-needs districts like Bridgeport, Connecticut,

where they have been consumed with issues related to attendance and engagement.

In a nation where poor districts typically have fewer counselors per student, those demands highlight one way the pandemic is likely to worsen inequities in the American education system as those with the most on their plates have the least amount of time to help students plan for the future.

Well before school buildings shut down last spring, addressing chronic absenteeism was a time-consuming chore for Pearce and her colleagues. Since the shift to distance and then hybrid learning, her students at Fairchild Wheeler Interdistrict Magnet school have taken on more responsibilities at home, working jobs or caring for siblings.

Counselors regularly run reports to identify students who are missing consecutive days of school or not logging in for class. From there, they analyze whether it’s a case of illness, or perhaps flagging motivation, and discuss strategies that could work for each student.

“Attendance, attendance, attendance,” Pearce said. “The data for attendance is like that emoji where there’s an explosion.”

There is one guidance counselor for every 350 students in high school in Bridgeport, Connecticut’s largest city where three quarters of the students in the low-income district are Black or Hispanic. That compares with much smaller ratios in neighboring, largely white Fairfield County communities including 1 for every 220 in Greenwich, 206 in Darien and 162 in Weston, according to federal data.

Nevertheless, counselors in Bridgeport generally need to spend more time engaging families and connecting them with resources outside of school, said Michael Testani, Bridgeport’s superintendent and a former school counselor.