Cascade School District counselors make progress in classrooms despite limited staff

LEAVENWORTH — Counselors across the Cascade School District (CSD) reported progress on student academic, social-emotional and career goals this year, while also describing the challenges of serving large caseloads with limited time and staffing.

During a recent update to the CSD Board on Feb. 9, counselors from the elementary, middle and high school levels outlined how they are restructuring schedules, expanding targeted interventions and relying on community partnerships to meet student needs.

School counselor Angela Waggoner serves all three elementaries — Peshastin Dryden (PD), Alpine Lakes and Beaver Valley — and oversees nearly 500 students. Waggoner said her focus this year has been restructuring her schedule to better meet the high demands of the student population. Waggoner reduced the frequency of social-emotional lessons in every classroom from every other week to once a month, allowing her to dedicate more time and attention to meet these needs, which she called a “bittersweet win.” She is also set to double the number of small student groups she leads, which are targeted towards learning specific social and emotional skills. As a result, Waggoner said she has been able to meet with more students than before.

“It's a great way to reach a larger group of kids without having to meet with each one individually,” said Waggoner. “I'm pretty excited about that.”

In Icicle River Middle School (IRMS), counselor Hana Getsinger highlighted progress on a social-emotional learning goal: bullying prevention. Getsinger said the work has included both student and staff training, focused intervention, conflict resolution skill development and data collection and review. She also noted that limited time was a challenge for cross-collaboration among counselors across schools.

At the high school, counselor Meche Grace said her focus this year has been doubling her parent outreach, including emails, phone calls and parent nights. Grace also emphasized an increased focus on grade intervention, such as dedicating time with students receiving D’s and F’s to provide additional study support, offer stress management strategies and teach organizational skills for success.

“On average, they decrease their number of failings by 35 percent from when I first met with them to the end of the semester,” said Grace. “There's still a lot of work to be done, but as a first iteration, I think we’ve been doing a great job.”

Grace added that one of her wins this year was continued relationship building with the students, noting that more students are coming by her office more often. However, the increase has challenged Grace to find a balance with her workload and limited schedule.

“We're working together as a school to make sure that that happens, because that's a really big deal,” said Grace. “For next year, I have just under 400 students, and so to get to know each of them, to know their names and something special about them is really important to me and to our staff.”

The counselors highlighted community partnerships as a key part of helping meet the needs of students, such as Communities in Schools, Cascade Medical Center, the Youth Mobile Crisis Response team, CAFÉ, Upper Valley MEND and more. However, the partnerships have not completely offset the demand created by large caseloads and limited counseling staff.

“We're super lucky to have these [counselors]. They do a great job, and they're all kind of saying out loud what we know, [which] is they all have really big case loads,” said CSD Superintendent Dr. Tracey Edou.

Edou acknowledged that enrollment decline led to a decrease in the number of funded counselor positions, while the needs of the student population remained high.

“That's a lot of work for Angela being pulled between the schools,” said Edou. “Every single one of them has multiple hats that they wear, and they do such a good job with our kids.”

Taylor Caldwell: 509-433-7276 or taylor@ward.media